Summary: The Application Architect role is a contract position requiring a minimum of 6 months of commitment, primarily focused on application integration development and cloud integration services. The candidate will manage Kafka platforms, ensuring high availability and disaster recovery while implementing security measures. Strong communication skills and the ability to work collaboratively with business areas are essential for this role. The position mandates three days of on-site work in Leeds.

Key Responsibilities:

• Manage Kafka Cluster build, including design, infrastructure planning, high availability, and disaster recovery.
• Build and support producer/consumer applications.
• Implement encryption, authentication, and authorization in Kafka environments.
• Undertake lifecycle management across on-premise Kafka environments.
• Research and recommend innovative maintenance solutions and ensure automation.
• Set up monitoring tools to provide metrics from various Kafka cluster components.
• Conduct regular assessments of platform health and stability, creating improvement plans.
• Experience in containerization (Openshift/Kubernetes) and SSL certificate management.
• Interact with Oracle/PostgreSQL databases and manage disaster recovery testing.
• Attend architecture forums and demonstrate pros/cons of different solutions.
• Support cloud transformation initiatives, including migration and modernization.
• Produce deployment architecture and interface catalogues, identifying dependencies.
• Provide technical support and guidance to delivery teams.

Key Skills:

• 5+ years of experience in application integration development.
• 2+ years of experience in Cloud Integration Services and Kafka.
• 3 years of experience managing Confluent/Apache Kafka platforms.
• Strong knowledge of network topologies and storage technologies.
• Experience with monitoring tools such as SPLUNK, Prometheus, and Grafana.
• Strong communication skills and ability to work with business areas.
• Experience in containerization technologies (Openshift/Kubernetes).
• SSL certificate management and public key management skills.
• Understanding of non-functional requirements and target architecture in integration space.
• Ability to assess project pipeline/demand and align to target architecture.

Salary (Rate): 500

City: Leeds

Country: UK

Working Arrangements: on-site

IR35 Status: inside IR35

Seniority Level: Mid-Level

Industry: IT