Job Description

About Advance Auto Parts
Founded in Roanoke, VA in 1932, Advance Auto Parts is a leading automotive aftermarket retail parts provider that serves both professional installer and do-it-yourself Customers. As of July 13, 2019, Advance operated 4,912 stores and 150 Worldpac branches in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Company also serves 1,250 independently owned CARQUEST branded stores across these locations in addition to Mexico, the Bahamas, Turks, and Caicos and the British Virgin Islands. The company has a workforce of over 70,000 knowledgeable and experienced Team Members who are proud to provide outstanding service to their Customers, Communities, and each other every day.

About Advance India Innovation Center (AIIC):
We are continually innovating and seeking to elevate the Customer experience at each of our stores. For an organization of our size and reach, today, it has become more critical than ever, to identify synergies and build shared capabilities. The Advance India Innovation Center (AIIC), located in Hyderabad, is a step in this strategic direction that enables us to access a larger talent pool, unlock operational efficiencies and increase levels of collaboration.

WHO WE ARE

Come join our Technology Team and start reimagining the future of the automotive aftermarket. We are a highly motivated tech-focused organization, excited to be in the midst of dynamic innovation and transformational change. Driven by Advance’s top-down commitment to empowering our team members, we are focused on delighting our Customers with Care and Speed, through delivery of world class technology solutions and products. We value and cultivate our culture by seeking to always be collaborative, intellectually curious, fun, open, and diverse. You will be a key member of a growing and passionate group focused on collaborating across business and technology resources to drive forward key programs and projects building enterprise capabilities across Advance Auto Parts.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following: other duties may be assigned:

Event Streaming Platform Architect

• Lead the architectural direction and engineering strategy for the Kafka and event‑streaming platform, supporting high‑volume, low‑latency, and mission‑critical workloads.

• Own and evolve enterprise Kafka platforms (Apache Kafka / managed variants), ensuring scalability, reliability, security, and cost efficiency.

• Drive adoption of event‑driven architectures across application teams, enabling real‑time data flows and decoupled system design.

Engineering Excellence & Platform Ownership

• Design, build, and operate large‑scale Kafka clusters across Kubernetes (GKE) and VM‑based deployments, including multi‑region and DR topologies.

• Solve complex distributed‑systems challenges such as throughput optimization, partition strategy, latency tuning, replication, and failure handling.

• Write production‑quality code and automation in Python and related languages, improving platform reliability and operational consistency.

• Take ownership of the operational health of the Kafka platform, including monitoring, alerting, capacity planning, and incident response.

Modernization, Optimization & DR

• Strategize and execute platform modernization initiatives, including:

• Migration from proprietary/vendor‑managed Kafka to open‑source Apache Kafka

• Kubernetes‑based Kafka deployments

• Infrastructure right‑sizing and performance tuning

• Deliver measurable outcomes in cost optimization, achieving sustained reductions through infrastructure and architecture improvements.

• Architect and maintain robust Disaster Recovery (DR) strategies, including:

• Active/active or active/passive designs

• Automated DR switchover and fallback

• Regular DR testing for Tier‑0 workloads with near‑zero downtime objectives

Automation, Governance & Observability

• Build and maintain automation frameworks (Terraform, Ansible, scripting) for provisioning, scaling, and managing Kafka infrastructure.

• Develop proactive monitoring and anomaly detection systems for Kafka clusters and connectors, enabling early detection and self‑healing where possible.

• Define and enforce platform standards, best practices, and governance for Kafka usage, topic design, retention, and security.

AI‑Driven & Advanced Streaming Use Cases

• Apply machine learning techniques to enhance observability and reliability, including anomaly detection and pattern recognition within streaming ecosystems.

• Support advanced use cases such as ontology‑driven streaming, graph‑based relationships, and intelligent data routing.

• Partner with AI/ML teams to integrate real‑time streaming with applied AI systems.

Technical Leadership & Collaboration

• Act as a force multiplier by mentoring senior engineers, guiding platform teams, and influencing architectural decisions across the organization.

• Lead and participate in architecture and design reviews, providing clear, actionable technical guidance.

• Collaborate closely with application, data, analytics, and infrastructure teams to ensure seamless integration and adoption of streaming platforms.

• Communicate complex technical concepts effectively to senior leadership and non‑technical stakeholders, translating engineering outcomes into business impact.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering or platform engineering, with deep specialization in Kafka and distributed data systems.

• Expert‑level knowledge of Apache Kafka, including cluster management, replication, partitioning, connectors, and streaming patterns.

• Strong hands‑on experience with event‑driven architectures and real‑time streaming platforms.

• Experience running Kafka on Kubernetes (GKE) and VM‑based infrastructures.

• Proficiency in Python (and familiarity with Java/Scala ecosystems in streaming platforms).

• Solid understanding of distributed systems fundamentals, including consistency, availability, fault tolerance, and scalability.

• Experience designing and executing DR strategies and large‑scale migrations.

• Strong background in automation and configuration management (Terraform, Ansible).

• Excellent communication and leadership skills with the ability to influence across teams.

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