OSS Infrastructure & Apache Kafka- Senior Developer

Position Description Company Profile: Founded in 1976, CGI is among the largest independent IT and business consulting services firms in the world. With 94,000 consultants and professionals across the globe, CGI delivers an end-to-end portfolio of capabilities, from strategic IT and business consulting to systems integration, managed IT and business process services and intellectual property solutions. CGI works with clients through a local relationship model complemented by a global delivery network that helps clients digitally transform their organizations and accelerate results. CGI Fiscal 2024 reported revenue is CA$14.68 billion and CGI shares are listed on the TSX (GIB.A) and the NYSE (GIB). Learn more at cgi.com. Job Title: OSS Infrastructure & Apache Kafka- Senior Developer Position: Senior Systems Engineer Experience: 5+ yrs Category: IT Infrastructure Main location: Hyderabad - Position ID: J0626-0615 Employment Type: Full Time Qualification: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field or higher with minimum 3 years of relevant experience. Job Description: Apache Kafka Architecture & Deployment

• Design and deploy multi-broker Apache Kafka clusters for high-throughput, low-latency financial messaging pipelines
• Implement geo-redundant and multi-datacenter Kafka topologies using MirrorMaker 2 or Confluent Replicator
• Configure KRaft mode (ZooKeeper-free) deployments and manage migration from ZooKeeper-based clusters
• Define and enforce topic partitioning strategies, replication factors, and retention policies aligned with data governance requirements
• Tune JVM heap settings, OS-level I/O parameters, and network buffers for optimal broker performance Resiliency & High Availability
• Implement fault-tolerant cluster configurations with appropriate ISR (In-Sync Replica) thresholds and unclean leader election policies
• Design and test disaster recovery (DR) runbooks, including broker failure, rack failure, and full-datacenter failover scenarios
• Configure Kafka consumer group rebalancing strategies to minimize consumer lag during rolling restarts and upgrades
• Establish lag monitoring, dead-letter queue (DLQ) patterns, and automated alerting using Prometheus, Grafana, or Datadog
• Perform capacity planning and load testing to ensure SLA adherence under peak financial transaction volumes Security & Compliance
• Configure end-to-end TLS/mTLS encryption for inter-broker and client-to-broker communication
• Implement SASL authentication (Kerberos/GSSAPI, SCRAM-SHA-512, OAuth/OIDC) and fine-grained ACL authorization
• Apply network segmentation, firewall rules, and broker listener isolation for financial-grade zero-trust architectures
• Ensure compliance with financial regulations including PCI-DSS, SOX, GDPR, and FINRA data handling requirements
• Integrate Kafka with enterprise secret management solutions (HashiCorp Vault, CyberArk) for credential rotation
• Conduct security audits of Kafka configurations and remediate findings in line with CIS Benchmarks and DORA/NIST frameworks Open Source Ecosystem & Integration
• Install, configure, and manage the broader OSS data platform stack, including:
• Apache Zookeeper / KRaft
• Kafka Connect (source & sink connectors for databases, S3, Elasticsearch)
• Kafka Streams and/or Apache Flink for real-time stream processing
• Schema Registry (Confluent or Apicurio) for Avro/Protobuf/JSON Schema enforcement
• Automate infrastructure provisioning using Ansible, Terraform, or Helm for Kubernetes-based deployments
• Integrate Kafka with CI/CD pipelines and support blue/green and canary deployment models Operations & Governance
• Establish and maintain runbooks, architecture decision records (ADRs), and operational documentation
• Participate in on-call rotation and provide Level 3 support for production Kafka incidents
• Collaborate with application development, security, and compliance teams to define producer/consumer contracts and SLAs
• Conduct code and configuration reviews; mentor junior engineers on OSS best practices

Experience

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience in enterprise or financial services environments
• 5+ years of hands-on Apache Kafka administration, deployment, and performance tuning in production
• Demonstrated experience deploying OSS platforms at scale within regulated industries (banking, capital markets, insurance, or payments)
• Proven track record of implementing Kafka security hardening (TLS, SASL, ACLs) in PCI-DSS or SOX-compliant environments Technical Skills
• Apache Kafka: broker configuration, topic management, consumer group internals, log compaction, quotas
• Security: mTLS, SASL/GSSAPI (Kerberos), SCRAM, OAuth 2.0, PKI certificate lifecycle management
• Infrastructure as Code: Ansible, Terraform, Helm, or equivalent
• Container orchestration: Kubernetes (Strimzi Kafka Operator experience a strong plus)
• Monitoring & observability: Prometheus, JMX Exporter, Grafana, ELK/OpenSearch, or Splunk
• Linux systems administration: RHEL/CentOS/Ubuntu, kernel tuning, systemd, network configuration
• Programming/scripting: Python, Bash, or Java (for Kafka Streams / custom connectors)
• Source control and DevOps: Git, Jenkins, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions Knowledge Areas
• Distributed systems fundamentals: consensus algorithms, CAP theorem, exactly-once semantics (EOS)
• Financial messaging standards and protocols (FIX, SWIFT, ISO 20022) — familiarity preferred
• Data governance concepts: schema evolution, data lineage, retention and archival policies
• Network security in financial environments: DMZ architecture, bastion hosts, private endpoints

Preferred Qualifications

• Confluent Certified Administrator for Apache Kafka (CCAAK) or equivalent certification
• Experience with Confluent Platform (Control Center, Schema Registry, ksqlDB) in an enterprise context
• Familiarity with additional OSS data platforms: Apache Flink, Apache Spark, Apache Pulsar
• Experience with financial cloud environments: AWS GovCloud, Azure Financial Services, or on-premises private cloud
• Knowledge of FIPS 140-2 compliant cryptographic modules for federal or regulated deployments
• Prior engagement with outsourced/staff-augmentation delivery models in financial sector programs PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCIES
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; ability to present technical architecture to non-technical stakeholders
• Self-directed and capable of delivering with minimal oversight in a fast-paced, matrixed organization
• Analytical problem-solver with a disciplined approach to root-cause analysis and post-incident reviews
• Collaborative team player with experience working across engineering, security, compliance, and operations functions Life at CGI: It is rooted in ownership, teamwork, respect and belonging. Here, you’ll reach your full potential because… You are invited to be an owner from day 1 as we work together to bring our Dream to life. That’s why we call ourselves CGI Partners rather than employees. We benefit from our collective success and actively shape our company’s strategy and direction Your work creates value. You’ll develop innovative solutions and build relationships with teammates and clients while accessing global capabilities to scale your ideas, embrace new opportunities, and benefit from expansive industry and technology expertise You’ll shape your career by joining a company built to grow and last. You’ll be supported by leaders who care about your health and well-being and provide you with opportunities to deepen your skills and broaden your horizons Come join our team, one of the largest IT and business consulting services firms in the world Your future duties and responsibilities

Required Qualifications To Be Successful In This Role Together, as owners, let’s turn meaningful insights into action. Life at CGI is rooted in ownership, teamwork, respect and belonging. Here, you’ll reach your full potential because… You are invited to be an owner from day 1 as we work together to bring our Dream to life. That’s why we call ourselves CGI Partners rather than employees. We benefit from our collective success and actively shape our company’s strategy and direction. Your work creates value. You’ll develop innovative solutions and build relationships with teammates and clients while accessing global capabilities to scale your ideas, embrace new opportunities, and benefit from expansive industry and technology expertise. You’ll shape your career by joining a company built to grow and last. You’ll be supported by leaders who care about your health and well-being and provide you with opportunities to deepen your skills and broaden your horizons. That same commitment to fairness extends to how we use technology. To support our recruitment team, AI tools may be used to help assess applications though they never replace human judgement. All hiring decisions remain entirely in the hands of our recruitment professionals. Come join our team—one of the largest IT and business consulting services firms in the world.