Kafka Lead / Architect

Senior Software Lead / Architect Java, Kafka
Location: Cincinnati, OH
Job Type: Contract

Job Summary

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineering Lead / Architect with deep hands-on experience in Java, Kafka, Golang, Python, and Kotlin and build highly scalable, distributed systems.

The ideal candidate will have strong software engineering fundamentals, extensive experience designing event-driven architectures, and the ability to quickly learn and adopt new technologies. This role requires a hands-on technical leader who can solve complex business and technical challenges while guiding engineering teams on architecture and implementation.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, architect, and develop highly scalable and reliable distributed systems.
• Provide technical leadership across complex backend engineering initiatives.
• Design and implement Kafka-based event-driven architectures and distributed messaging solutions.
• Define system architecture, technical standards, design patterns, and engineering best practices.
• Build scalable microservices and backend platforms capable of handling high-volume workloads.
• Analyze complex technical and business requirements and translate them into robust engineering solutions.
• Troubleshoot performance, scalability, reliability, and production issues across distributed systems.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, and architecture teams to drive technical decisions.
• Conduct code reviews and provide technical guidance and mentorship to engineers.
• Evaluate and adopt new technologies that improve system scalability, reliability, and engineering productivity.
• Ensure solutions follow best practices for security, performance, maintainability, and resiliency.

Required Skills

• Extensive hands-on experience with Java and enterprise backend development.
• Strong hands-on experience with Apache Kafka and event-driven systems.
• Production experience with Golang (Go).
• Hands-on experience with Python for backend, automation, or distributed systems.
• Working experience with Kotlin.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems and microservices architecture.
• Experience designing highly scalable, fault-tolerant, and high-availability systems.
• Strong understanding of messaging, event streaming, concurrency, and asynchronous processing.
• Proven experience in software architecture and technical leadership.
• Strong problem-solving and system-design capabilities.
• Ability to rapidly learn and adopt new technologies.

Preferred Experience

• Experience working with large-scale enterprise platforms.
• Experience with high-volume Kafka implementations.
• Experience with cloud-native and containerized applications.
• Experience with performance tuning and production troubleshooting.
• Experience leading architecture/design discussions and mentoring senior engineers.