Role Title: Confluent Kafka SMEDuration: contract to run until 30/06/2026Location: Manchester or Glasgow, Hybrid 3 days per week onsiteRate: up to £552 p/d Umbrella inside IR35Role purpose/summaryWe are seeking a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in Confluent and Apache Kafka with proven experience in the banking sector. The ideal candidate will design, implement, and optimize event-driven architectures, ensuring high availability and scalability for critical financial systems.Key Skills/requirementsArchitect and manage Kafka clusters and Confluent platform components.Develop and maintain streaming solutions for Real Time data processing.Ensure compliance with banking security and regulatory standards.Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate Kafka into enterprise systems.Provide performance tuning, troubleshooting, and best practices guidance.Required Skills andamp; Experience:Strong expertise in Apache Kafka and Confluent ecosystem (Connect, Schema Registry, KSQL, etc.).Hands-on experience with Kafka security, monitoring, and disaster recovery.Prior experience in banking or financial services environments.Proficiency in Java, Python, or similar for Kafka client development.Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and containerization (Docker/Kubernetes).All profiles will be reviewed against the required skills and experience. Due to the high number of applications we will only be able to respond to successful applicants in the first instance. We thank you