DevOps Specialist

We are seeking a Senior Kafka DevOps Engineer to join our Integration Platform team responsible for building and managing Kafka-based event streaming capabilities used globally across manufacturing, supply chain, and connected vehicle domains.

You will play a key role in managing, automating, and evolving Kafka infrastructure on Kubernetes (OpenShift/AKS), driving platform reliability, automation-first operations, and secure data streaming across distributed environments.

This is a senior technical role requiring deep Kafka operations knowledge, hands-on Kubernetes and GitOps experience, and a passion for continuous improvement and automation.

Location : Gothenburg

Key Responsibilities

Design, deploy, and manage Apache Kafka clusters on Kubernetes using Strimzi Operator and CRD-based management.

Manage Kafka infrastructure lifecycle using Crossplane compositions (XRDs, providers) and GitOps workflows.

Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for Kafka clusters, topics, users, and ACLs using Helm, Terraform, and GitOps pipelines (ArgoCD/FluxCD).

Administer and upgrade Kafka clusters ensuring high availability, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery readiness.

Implement Kafka ACLs, SSL/TLS encryption for secure communication.

Develop and manage monitoring and alerting dashboards using Grafana Cloud and Prometheus.

Drive automation-first operations, reducing manual intervention and improving service reliability.

Perform root cause analysis (RCA) for incidents and develop proactive monitoring rules.

Maintain and update runbooks, SOPs, and Git-based documentation for Kafka operations.

Collaborate with platform engineering teams to enhance Kafka self-service provisioning via UCP/Backstage portals.

Support integration with Schema Registry (Apicurio) and other messaging platforms (IBM MQ, Azure Service Bus).

Drive continuous improvement, innovation, and adoption of emerging Kafka platform features.

Technical Skills & Competencies

Core Kafka Expertise

Strong understanding of Kafka architecture, partitions, offsets, replication, and consumer groups.

Hands-on experience with Kafka administration and tuning in production-grade environments.

Expertise in Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams, and Schema Registry management.

Ability to design and operate multi-cluster, multi-environment Kafka deployments.

Experience managing Kafka on Kubernetes (OpenShift/AKS) using Strimzi Operator — Confluent Cloud experience alone is not sufficient.

Cloud & DevOps

Azure DevOps / GitHub Actions for CI/CD automation and integration workflows.

GitOps frameworks (ArgoCD / FluxCD) for declarative infrastructure management.

Experience with Crossplane for managing Kafka and other infrastructure resources as code.

Helm chart authoring and management for reusable deployments.

Strong scripting skills (Python / Go / Bash) for automation and custom tooling.

Monitoring, Security & Governance

Observability stack: Prometheus, Grafana Cloud, OpenTelemetry, ELK

PKI, secrets management, CertManager, Vault (HashiCorp) for secure key and certificate handling.

Implementation of zero-trust, least-privilege ACLs, and end-to-end data encryption.

Experience in ITIL-based processes (Incident, Problem, and Change Management).

Familiarity with ServiceNow for ticketing and service reporting.

Preferred and Required Knowledge

Hands-on experience with event-driven architectures.

Understanding of network policies, container security, and Kubernetes namespaces.

Familiarity with Apicurio Schema Registry, UCP/Backstage portals, and Git-based configuration management.