Senior Kafka Engineer (Freelance)

About Brainsquare & this opportunity At Brainsquare, we help organizations design, build and manage business-critical application landscapes. We focus on long-term partnerships where technology ownership, engineering expertise and operational excellence come together. For a strategic data integration initiative within a large-scale industrial environment, we are building a new event-driven integration platform that will become the foundation for future digital transformation. This is not a short-term implementation assignment. The goal is to create a scalable, reliable and future-proof integration capability based on Apache Kafka, enabling real-time communication between different operational systems, applications and data platforms. We are looking for a Senior Kafka Engineer who can help us build the foundation, bring Kafka expertise into the team and support the transition towards long-term platform ownership. The assignment is based in Belgium with a hybrid working model, combining remote work with regular on-site collaboration moments in the Antwerp region. Your role As Senior Kafka Engineer, you will play a key role in designing, implementing and preparing a production-grade Kafka platform. You will work together with solution architects, software engineers and operational teams to define how event streaming should be implemented, governed and maintained. Your responsibilities include: Design and set up Kafka-based event streaming solutions Define Kafka platform standards and best practices Configure and optimize topics, partitions, replication, retention and consumer patterns Support schema governance and event contract design Implement Kafka Connect integrations and data flows Contribute to security, access control and platform hardening Set up monitoring, observability and operational processes Troubleshoot and optimize Kafka performance and reliability Transfer knowledge towards engineering and operations teams You are not only implementing Kafka: you help create a sustainable platform model. Ideal backgrounds This role is typically a strong match for experienced engineers who have evolved from integration, middleware, platform engineering or event-driven architecture backgrounds and who enjoy taking technical ownership. Relevant previous roles could include: Kafka Platform Engineer Event Streaming Engineer Senior Integration Engineer Middleware Engineer Platform Engineer with Kafka expertise Hands-on Solution Architect with strong Kafka implementation experience You will feel at home in this role if you have worked in environments where availability, scalability and operational reliability are essential, such as: logistics & supply chain manufacturing industrial environments utilities telecom financial services other 24/7 enterprise environments Must-have skills Strong hands-on experience with Apache Kafka in production environments Experience designing, configuring and maintaining Kafka platforms Understanding of Kafka architecture: brokers topics partitions replication consumer groups retention strategies Experience with Kafka Connect and integration patterns Experience with event-driven architecture principles Ability to define operational standards and best practices Experience with monitoring, troubleshooting and performance tuning Strong engineering mindset with ownership mentality Ability to collaborate with architects, engineers and operational teams Strong communication skills in English Nice-to-have skills Kubernetes experience Strimzi Kafka Operator Kafka KRaft mode Open-source Kafka platform implementations Schema registry concepts Karapace or Confluent Schema Registry API integration patterns Infrastructure-as-Code principles Prometheus / Grafana monitoring Security concepts: authentication authorization certificates ACL management MQTT / IoT / OT integration experience Good understanding of Dutch What success looks like As part of this long-term platform journey, you help create and evolve a future-proof event streaming capability: A stable and scalable Kafka platform becomes the foundation for new integrations and business initiatives Kafka standards and best practices continuously evolve together with the platform New integrations are delivered through reusable and sustainable patterns Monitoring, security and operational excellence become part of the platform DNA Engineering teams collaborate around a shared event-driven architecture approach The platform continues to grow, improve and support future digital transformation initiatives Your impact goes beyond the initial implementation: you help shape and evolve a strategic integration platform that creates long-term value. What we offer A strategic role within a long-term technology partnership, where Brainsquare takes ownership beyond initial delivery The opportunity to help build and evolve a business-critical event streaming platform from the foundation phase onwards Collaboration with experienced architects and engineering teams in a high-impact environment A partnership mindset where your expertise contributes to building long-term capabilities, not only delivering technical tasks Long-term technical impact through platform ownership, knowledge sharing and continuous improvement Freelance assignment in Belgium with a hybrid working model combining remote work and collaboration moments in the Antwerp region Professional environment focused on ownership, quality and sustainable engineering Interested? Are you a Kafka specialist who enjoys building platforms, solving complex integration challenges and taking technical ownership? Let’s connect and discuss how you can contribute to this strategic event streaming journey.