We are seeking an experienced Messaging Middleware Administrator with strong expertise in Kafka (Apache, Confluent, MSK) and RabbitMQ to join our infrastructure and platform team. The ideal candidate will have a proven background in administering, optimizing, and troubleshooting messaging platforms in production environments. This role involves ensuring high availability, scalability, and security of messaging systems while working closely with cross-functional teams. The candidate will also play a key role in incident resolution, monitoring, and mentoring junior team members.

Key Responsibilities :

- Kafka & RabbitMQ Administration : Install, configure, upgrade, and maintain Kafka clusters (Apache, Confluent, MSK) and RabbitMQ in production and non-production environments.

- System Monitoring & Optimization : Monitor cluster health, latency, throughput, and resource utilization. Proactively tune configurations to optimize performance and reliability.

- Incident Management : Diagnose and resolve production issues related to brokers, queues, topics, zookeeper/KRaft, schema registry, and connectors. Provide on-call support as required.

- High Availability & Disaster Recovery : Implement and manage backup, failover, and disaster recovery strategies for messaging systems.

- Security & Compliance : Ensure secure access controls, encryption, authentication (AuthN), and authorization (AuthZ) for Kafka and RabbitMQ.

- Automation & CI/CD Integration : Automate provisioning, scaling, and monitoring tasks using scripting (Python, Bash, Ansible, or Terraform) and integrate with CI/CD pipelines.

- Collaboration : Partner with developers, DevOps, and cloud engineers to design and deliver reliable messaging solutions.

- Documentation : Maintain detailed technical documentation, standard operating procedures, and architecture diagrams.

- Mentorship : Guide and mentor junior engineers in best practices for managing messaging middleware.

Must-Have Qualifications & Skills :

- Overall 7+ years of IT experience with 3+ years dedicated to Kafka and RabbitMQ administration.

- Strong hands-on experience with Apache Kafka, Confluent Kafka, Amazon MSK, and RabbitMQ in large-scale production setups.

- In-depth knowledge of Kafka components : brokers, zookeeper/KRaft, schema registry, connectors, partitions, and replication.

- Proven expertise in monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Datadog, etc.) and middleware performance metrics.

- Experience troubleshooting message delivery, consumer lag, cluster instability, and connectivity issues.

- Familiarity with cloud environments (AWS/Azure/GCP) and managed messaging services.

- Strong problem-solving skills with a proactive and analytical mindset.

- Excellent communication skills with the ability to collaborate across engineering and operations teams.

Good-to-Have Skills :

- Experience with other messaging systems (ActiveMQ, Pulsar, or IBM MQ).

- Scripting & automation knowledge (Python, Bash, Ansible, or Terraform).

- Exposure to DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and Kubernetes.

- Knowledge of security protocols (TLS, SSL, Kerberos, SASL, OAuth).

- Prior experience in capacity planning and large-scale cluster migrations.

Personal Attributes :

- Strong ownership mindset with attention to detail.

- Ability to work effectively under pressure and manage critical incidents.

- Passion for continuous learning and keeping up with evolving technologies.

- Collaborative attitude and willingness to mentor and support team members