Sr. Systems Engineer (3 - 6 years, Kafka, IBM MQ, DevOps, Cloud, Gen AI, Automation)

Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale — tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world. Join Visa and do work that matters — to you, to your community, and to the world.

Progress starts with you.

Job Description

To help Visa deliver on its vision of being the best way to pay and be paid for everyone, everywhere, the Operations & Infrastructure (O&I) organization provides best-in-class infrastructure services that are secure, scalable, highly available, and increasingly powered by software-defined infrastructure. O&I offers an exciting opportunity to work with modern technologies as the industry continues to evolve through innovations such as cloud computing and platform engineering.

The Middleware Engineering team delivers end-to-end design, build, and support services for web and middle-tier platforms within the Platform as a Service (PaaS) organization. The selected candidate will collaborate closely with systems engineers, architects, and cross functional technical teams to design, build, and support enterprise grade streaming and messaging platforms built on Apache Kafka.

We are seeking an energetic Senior Systems Engineer with strong hands-on experience in the Kafka ecosystem, infrastructure automation, cloud platforms, and enterprise messaging support. This role involves engineering, implementation, administration, troubleshooting, performance tuning, and operational support for modern event streaming and managed file transfer platforms.

The ideal candidate brings deep Kafka expertise, excellent troubleshooting and performance tuning skills, strong documentation and reporting practices, a security first mindset, and a willingness to leverage GenAI to automate repetitive operational tasks.

Experience with IBM MQ and IBM Connect:Direct is a plus.

Key Responsibilities

• Implement, administer, and support Kafka platforms and ecosystem components, including Apache Kafka, Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams, Schema Registry, ksqlDB, Mirror-Maker, REST Proxy, and ZooKeeper-KRaft.
• Build and manage AWS based messaging solutions, with strong hands-on experience in Amazon MSK for cluster provisioning, configuration, scaling, monitoring, and operational support.
• Automate infrastructure and platform operations using Terraform and Ansible for provisioning, configuration management, deployment, and standardization.
• Develop and maintain Python and-or Bash scripts to automate routine administration, health checks, reporting, alert validation, and recurring operational tasks.
• Provide L3 engineering support, including incident resolution, root cause analysis, proactive monitoring, capacity planning, and performance tuning.
• Apply strong troubleshooting skills across Kafka, cloud infrastructure, operating systems, storage, and networking to resolve end-to-end issues.
• Collaborate with application, DevOps, infrastructure, security, and support teams to ensure reliable, scalable, and secure platform operations.
• Enforce and promote security best practices, including secure configurations, access controls, certificate management, and compliances aligned with operational standards.
• Maintain high quality documentation, runbooks, standard operating procedures, and reporting to ensure operational transparency and knowledge sharing.
• Contribute as a team player to delivery, support, and continuous improvement initiatives while adhering to engineering standards and operational best practices.
• Drive innovation by identifying opportunities to apply GenAI to automate repetitive tasks, improve operational efficiency, and enhance support processes.

This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in office will be confirmed by your hiring manager.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications 5+ years of relevant work experience with a bachelor's degree, or 2+ years of experience with an Advanced degree (Master’s, MBA, JD, MD), or PhD with no prior work experience Preferred Qualifications 6+ years of experience with a bachelor's degree, or 4+ years of experience with an Advanced degree, or up to 3 years of experience with a PhD Strong hands-on experience with Kafka engineering and support across core and ecosystem products Hands‑on experience with Terraform, Ansible, Python, and-or Bash Solid knowledge of AWS, particularly Amazon MSK Experienced with Monitoring tools, Prometheus, Grafana Strong understanding of RHEL-Unix-Linux, storage, and networking fundamentals Excellent troubleshooting, analytical, and performance tuning skills Strong documentation, reporting, and communication skills Demonstrated commitment to operational excellence, security, and standard engineering practices Experience supporting IBM MQ and IBM Connect:Direct environments (preferred)

Additional Information

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.