~8+ years of experience in designing and architecting solutions using Confluent Kafka, with hands-on experience in Confluent Kafka ~ Ability to lead client engagements, translate business requirements into technical solutions, and guide implementation teams ~ Deep understanding of Kafka internals, KRaft architecture, and Confluent components ~ Experience with Confluent Cloud, Stream Governance, Data Lineage, and RBAC ~ Expertise in stream processing (Apache Flink, Kafka Streams, ksqlDB) and event-driven architecture ~ Strong proficiency in Java, Python, or Scala ~ Proven ability to integrate Kafka with enterprise xsgfvud systems (databases, APIs, microservices)~ Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and Kubernetes ~ Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure automation (Ansible, CFK)