About the Mission

Kafka consultant role

Job Summary:

As part of a three-month mission, we are looking for a Kafka consultant. As an expert, you evaluate, optimize the existing infrastructure and draft the governance linked to the operationalization of the platform. You will also participate in resolving a series of specific problems related to the maintenance of the platform

Main missions:

Design and architecture: Participate in the architecture of data flows and integrate Kafka as the backbone of microservices and cdc

Development: Create and optimize data pipelines, configure topics, partitions and retention mechanisms. Operationalize these procedures

Integration: Evaluate the architecture of existing Kafka Connect connectors and improve monitoring

Supervision: Implement monitoring tools (e.g. Grafana)

Implementation of troubleshooting procedures to guarantee high availability of clusters

Security: Secure data exchanges (TLS, SASL, ACL)

Knowledge transfer and technical team training

Required skills:

Kafka expertise: In-depth mastery of the Apache Kafka ecosystem (Broker, KRaft, Schema Registry)

Frameworks: Hands-on experience with Kafka Streams and Kafka Connect

Infrastructure: Knowledge of technologies related to containerization (Strimzi, confluent, etc.)

Architecture: Good understanding of distributed architectures, microservices principles and event processing

Knowledge of Ansible

Optional: Understanding of datastack on streaming (Iceberg, Spark, Flink,…)

Profile sought:

Significant experience in production implementation and optimization of Kafka platforms

Analytical and problem-solving skills

Required Skills

Architecture IT, Grafana, Kafka

Practical Information

  • Company: SMALS
  • Location: Bruxelles – Hybrid
  • Start Date: 1 September 2026
  • End Date: 30 November 2026
  • Duration: 5 months
  • Contract Type: Freelance / Mission
  • Application Deadline: 8 July 2026