Kafka Developer Jobs in Washington (NOW HIRING)

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Principal technical authority for a public-facing portal platform. Defines the end-to-end target architecture - containerized Drupal on Kubernetes, event-driven integration via Kafka, API-first services, cloud data and secrets management, and an automated DevSecOps pipeline - and is accountable for the platform meeting performance, scalability, security, and accessibility obligations.

     Own the solution architecture: application, integration, data, infrastructure, and security views, with documented decision records.

     Design event-driven integration using Apache Kafka - topic design, event schemas, producer/consumer libraries, idempotency, replay, and error handling - in place of point-to-point coupling.

     Define the API-first strategy: REST API standards for versioning, authentication, logging, monitoring, retry, and error handling.

     Architect the containerized runtime on Kubernetes (EKS) with managed relational data (Aurora), shared file storage (EFS), object storage (S3), centralized registry, CDN/WAF, and secrets management via a managed vault with pod identity.

     Establish centralized configuration management - no hardcoded environment settings, feature flags, or credentials.

     Define and drive the DevSecOps pipeline: containerized builds, GitFlow release process, automated functional and performance testing, container/image vulnerability scanning, and controlled promotion to staging and production.

     Design enterprise observability: centralized logging, distributed tracing, API and message-stream metrics, performance and business transaction dashboards.

     Architect reusable modules, a configurable form framework, and component libraries intended for reuse across future initiatives.

     Define the approach for AI-enabled capabilities - OCR, document classification, intelligent summarization, assisted case preparation - with human oversight, and for agentic developer tooling that accelerates engineering.

     Lead technical governance: design reviews, architecture compliance, technical debt strategy, and mentorship of leads and senior developers.

     Ensure architecture satisfies federal security requirements (STIG remediation, boundary definition, PPS documentation, encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access control) and Section 508 obligations.

     Architect Drupal 10+ with MySQL on the DOL PACE platform and ensure portability, maintainability, and alignment with DOL Enterprise Architecture and approved platform decisions.

     Define automated testing strategy across unit, API, Cypress/UI regression, Section 508, security, and performance testing, integrated as CI/CD quality gates.

     Define immutable audit logging, records-retention, encryption, identity, access-control, file-scanning, fault-tolerance, uptime, scalability, and browser/mobile architecture patterns required by the PWS.

     Lead ATO/security authorization support including authorization boundary, PPS, external interfaces, sensitive-data protections, baseline inventories, vulnerability remediation, and architecture evidence.

     10+ years of software engineering with 5+ years as a lead architect on enterprise web platforms.

     5+ years hands-on Drupal with full stack depth - architecture, module strategy, theming, performance, and security.

     Proven Apache Kafka architecture experience: event modeling, schema governance, producer/consumer patterns, and operational concerns.

     Deep AWS architecture experience: EKS/Kubernetes, Aurora, S3, EFS, Secrets Manager, ECR, CloudFront/WAF, IAM.

     DevSecOps ownership: GitLab CI/CD, containerization, IaC (Terraform or equivalent), automated security scanning (e.g., Trivy), release management.

     Integration experience with enterprise BPM/case management platforms (Appian or comparable) and identity providers (OIDC/SAML, Login.gov or equivalent).

     Database architecture across relational platforms; ability to reason about DB2 and cloud-native alternatives during migration.

     Demonstrated accountability for Section 508 / WCAG 2.1 AA compliance at the platform level.

     Agile/SAFe architectural leadership.

     Substantial hands-on experience with AI-assisted engineering tools and pragmatic judgment about where AI belongs in a federal platform.

     Experience with PACE or comparable enterprise container platforms and architecture of Drupal/MySQL workloads on Kubernetes/OpenShift.

     Demonstrated architecture of automated CI/CD quality gates, including Cypress or comparable UI automation, API tests, performance tests, and security scanning.

     Strong knowledge of federal security, privacy, records, Section 508, and release/configuration management requirements.

     AWS Solutions Architect Professional; Certified Kubernetes Administrator; Acquia/Drupal certification; SAFe Architect.

     Experience designing multi-tenant or reusable platform frameworks for reuse across agency programs.

     Experience with MCP-based or API-based AI service integration under enterprise security controls.

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering with 10+ years of relevant experience; Master's preferred.

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