Kafka Administrator

### Key Responsibilities

* Administer and maintain *Apache Kafka clusters* in production environments.

* Manage Kafka *brokers, topics, partitions, replicas, consumer groups, and configurations*.

* Monitor Kafka cluster health, performance, throughput, lag, and resource utilization.

* Troubleshoot issues related to *brokers, producers, consumers, replication, and message delivery*.

* Perform Kafka cluster upgrades, configuration changes, patching, and maintenance.

* Monitor and resolve *Consumer Lag, Under Replication, ISR, and broker availability* issues.

* Configure and manage *Kafka Connect, producers, consumers, and connectors*.

* Implement and manage Kafka *security* including SSL/TLS, SASL, authentication, and authorization/ACLs.

* Perform capacity planning and *Kafka performance tuning*.

* Manage partitioning and replication strategies for high availability and fault tolerance.

* Handle production incidents and perform *root cause analysis (RCA)*.

* Create and maintain operational documentation, SOPs, and troubleshooting guides.

* Collaborate with DevOps, Application, Cloud, and Development teams for Kafka-related issues.

* Automate routine administration and monitoring activities using scripting/tools.

### Must-Have Skills

* 4+ years of hands-on experience in *Kafka Administration*.

* Strong knowledge of *Apache Kafka architecture*.

* Experience with *Kafka Brokers, Topics, Partitions, Replication and Consumer Groups*.

* Strong understanding of *Producer/Consumer architecture*.

* Hands-on experience with *Kafka monitoring and troubleshooting*.

* Knowledge of *Consumer Lag, ISR, Under Replication, Leader/Follower concepts*.

* Experience with *Kafka security SSL/TLS, SASL, ACLs*.

* Experience with *Kafka Connect* and connectors.

* Good knowledge of *Linux/Unix* administration.

* Strong *SQL and database fundamentals*.

* Experience with scripting using *Shell/Python* is preferred.

* Good troubleshooting, analytical, and communication skills.