Senior Confluent Kafka Lead / Python Developer

• Lead the design and implementation of enterprise Kafka and Confluent Platform solutions (Kafka, Schema Registry, Connect, ksqlDB).

• Define and enforce topic design, partitioning, retention, and schema evolution standards.

• Act as technical owner for Kafka clusters across dev, test, and production environments.

• Drive best practices for high availability, fault tolerance, and scalability.

• Design and develop Python-based Kafka producers and consumers using Confluent Kafka Python APIs.

• Build event-driven microservices and streaming applications in Python.

• Implement message serialization and schema validation (Avro, JSON, Protobuf).

• Handle idempotency, retries, back-pressure, and error handling patterns.

• Design event-driven integration patterns bridging microservices, data stores, APIs, and third party systems.

• Integrate Kafka with downstream consumers such as databases, data lakes, analytics platforms, and search systems.

• Support real-time pipelines for transactions, telemetry, customer events, and analytics.

• Collaborate with API, data, and application teams to align event contracts.

• Implement Kafka security controls:

o TLS encryption

o SASL / OAuth authentication

o ACL-based authorization

• Enforce data governance, schema compatibility rules, and event ownership models.

• Ensure compliance with enterprise security and regulatory standards.

• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines for Kafka-related applications and configurations.

• Use Infrastructure as Code to provision and manage Kafka infrastructure.

• Implement monitoring and alerting using tools such as Confluent Control Center, Prometheus, Grafana, or cloud-native equivalents.

• Troubleshoot production streaming issues related to latency, lag, throughput, or data loss.

• Serve as Kafka subject matter expert and technical lead.

• Mentor developers on event-driven design and streaming best practices.

• Review designs and code for Kafka and Python-based streaming solutions.

• 6-10+ years of experience in software or data engineering.

• 4+ years of hands-on experience with Apache Kafka and/or Confluent Platform.

• Strong knowledge of:

o Kafka internals (brokers, partitions, offsets, consumer groups)

o Schema Registry and schema evolution

o Kafka Connect architectures and connectors

• Strong proficiency in Python for backend and streaming development.

• Experience building production-grade services using Python frameworks and libraries.

• Familiarity with async processing, multithreading, or stream processing patterns is a plus.

• Experience deploying Kafka and applications in cloud or hybrid environments (AWS, Azure, GCP).

• CI/CD pipeline experience (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab, Azure DevOps).

• Infrastructure-as-Code experience (Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM/Bicep).

• Containerization experience (Docker, Kubernetes) preferred.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with ksqlDB, Kafka Streams, or stream processing frameworks (Flink, Spark Streaming).

• Exposure to event sourcing or CQRS patterns.

• Integration of Kafka with data lakes, warehouses, and analytics platforms.

• Confluent or cloud platform certifications.

• Experience supporting high-throughput, low-latency systems.

The base compensation range for this role in the posted location is: $82,082 - $193,440

Capgemini provides compensation range information in accordance with applicable national, state, provincial, and local pay transparency laws. The base compensation range listed for this position reflects the minimum and maximum target compensation Capgemini, in good faith, believes it may pay for the role at the time of this posting. This range may be subject to change as permitted by law.

The actual compensation offered to any candidate may fall outside of the posted range and will be determined based on multiple factors legally permitted in the applicable jurisdiction.

These may include, but are not limited to: Geographic location, Education and qualifications, Certifications and licenses, Relevant experience and skills, Seniority and performance, Market and business consideration, Internal pay equity.

It is not typical for candidates to be hired at or near the top of the posted compensation range.

In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for additional compensation such as variable incentives, bonuses, or commissions, depending on the position and applicable laws.

Capgemini offers a comprehensive, non-negotiable benefits package to all regular, full-time employees. In the U.S. and Canada, available benefits are determined by local policy and eligibility and may include:

• Paid time off based on employee grade (A-F), defined by policy: Vacation: 12-25 days, depending on grade, Company paid holidays, Personal Days, Sick Leave
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage (or provincial healthcare coordination in Canada)
• Retirement savings plans (e.g., 401(k) in the U.S., RRSP in Canada)
• Life and disability insurance
• Employee assistance programs
• Other benefits as provided by local policy and eligibility

Important Notice: Compensation (including bonuses, commissions, or other forms of incentive pay) is not considered earned, vested, or payable until it becomes due under the terms of applicable plans or agreements and is subject to Capgemini's discretion, consistent with applicable laws. The Company reserves the right to amend or withdraw compensation programs at any time, within the limits of applicable legislation.

Capgemini ist einer der weltweit führenden Anbieter von Management- und IT-Beratung, Technologie-Services und Digitaler Transformation. Als ein Wegbereiter für Innovation unterstützt das Unternehmen seine Kunden bei deren komplexen Herausforderungen rund um Cloud, Digital und Plattformen.