18th March, 2026
For more than three decades, Strategic Data Systems (SDS) has been a software consultancy firm specializing in strategy, technology, and business transformation for Fortune 100 companies, mid-sized firms, and startups. At SDS, we empower our development teams to address our clients' critical business challenges by leveraging cutting edge technologies. If you seek a workplace where your contributions are truly appreciated, then SDS is the company for you. Join us today to work alongside fellow development specialists and become a crucial part of our dynamic and cohesive community.
Job Title: Platform Engineer III
Location: Cincinnati, OH (Downtown)
Years of Experience: 4-20
TOP SKILLS:
Must Have
- AWS (MSK Preferred!)
- Kafka
- Terraform
What We Are NOT Looking For
- Application developers who have only produced/consumed messages
- Pure DevOps engineers without deep Kafka experience
- Theoretical knowledge without production ownership
What You'll Do Kafka Platform Engineer (AWS, MSK, Terraform, DevOps)
We are seeking a hands-on Kafka Platform Engineer to support and scale our enterprise event-driven architecture running on Amazon MSK within AWS.
This role will own Kafka infrastructure, automation, and operational excellence across a hybrid cloud ecosystem.
Core Responsibilities
Kafka Platform Ownership
- Operate and support Amazon MSK in production
- Design and manage multi-AZ / multi-region Kafka architectures for high availability
- Topic design, partitioning strategy, retention tuning, and capacity planning
- Troubleshoot consumer lag, rebalancing, broker performance, and throughput bottlenecks
- Manage Schema Registry and enforce schema governance
Kafka Connect & Integration
- Deploy and manage Kafka Connect clusters
- Configure and troubleshoot source/sink connectors
- Support real-time integrations into Snowflake and other enterprise systems
Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Advanced)
- Build and maintain Terraform modules for MSK, networking, IAM, security groups, and supporting AWS services
- Deep understanding of Terraform lifecycle meta-arguments, state management, modules, and remote backends
- Automate environment provisioning across dev, test, and prod
AWS & DevOps
- Strong understanding of AWS networking (VPCs, subnets, security groups, IAM)
- Experience supporting production workloads in AWS
- CI/CD pipeline integration for infrastructure and Kafka deployments
- Monitoring and observability (CloudWatch, Prometheus, Dynatrace, or similar)
Security & Governance
- Kafka ACLs, IAM integration, encryption, secrets management
- Experience working in regulated enterprise environments
What We Are NOT Looking For
- Application developers who have only produced/consumed messages
- Pure DevOps engineers without deep Kafka experience
- Theoretical knowledge without production ownership
What You'll Get SDS, Inc. provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, amnesty, or status as a covered veteran in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.
- Competitive base salary
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage
- Optional life and disability insurance provided
- 401(k) with a company match and optional profit sharing
- Paid vacation time
- Paid Bench time
- Training allowance offering
- You'll be eligible to earn referral bonuses!
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