Cloud Platform Engineer (Kafka Specialist)

Remote OK - Anywhere in Japan
Full-time
February 18, 2026

We are looking for someone who is not only hands-on with Kafka internals, but also confident operating it at scale in production environments that is processing millions of payments daily for 70M+ users.

At the core of our architecture is Apache Kafka. As we continue to scale, we’re:
- Migrating our self-hosted Kafka clusters to KRaft mode
- Operating Kafka across both self-managed environments and AWS MSK
- Strengthening reliability, security, and observability
- Driving deeper adoption of a truly event-driven architecture

Main Responsibilities

Tech leadership, architecture, development, and operations for Apache Kafka, including both self-hosted clusters and AWS MSK
Ensure deployment, management, and smooth operation of highly available Kafka infrastructure
Monitoring and alerting of Kafka for reliability, throughput, and latency
Performance tuning and instrumentation of Kafka clusters and pipelines
Partner with application teams to guide Kafka topic design, schema management, and best practices
Contribute to the development of scalable, secure, and observable data pipelines
Automate infrastructure and operations workflows using infrastructure-as-code tools

Tech Stack

Java, Python, Go
Kafka, Elasticsearch/Opensearch, AWS MSK, Athena, Glue
Docker, Kubernetes, ArgoCD, Argo rollouts, Argo workflows, Artifactory, AWS, GCP
GitHub, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Terraform, Ansible, Microservices, GitOps
Logstash, Fluent-bit, Vector, Victoria Metrics, Grafana, Prometheus
Slack, Zoom, Confluence, JIRA

Qualifications

Minimum of 3 years of engineering experience with Apache Kafka in production environments
Minimum of 3 years of experience in AWS, Terraform, Ansible and Linux Administration
Strong hands-on experience with Kafka cluster operations, including setup, tuning, and maintenance
Experience with Kafka authentication and authorization operations
Familiarity with AWS cloud platform, especially Amazon MSK (Managed Streaming for Kafka)
We heavily rely on AWS, so those without previous AWS experiences must expect to catch up with it after joining us
Proficiency in one or more general-purpose programming languages (e.g., Python, Java, Go)
Experience with infrastructure automation and configuration management tools, such as Terraform or Ansible
Understanding of modern system design using microservice architecture
Working knowledge of Git and CI/CD tools

Preferred Qualifications

Deep expertise in running and scaling Apache Kafka both self-hosted and in managed cloud environments (e.g., AWS MSK)
Experience migrating or operating Kafka in KRaft mode (no ZooKeeper)
Experience in data replicate between Kafka clusters, enabling seamless data migration, disaster recovery, and cross-region data synchronization
Exposure to Kafka security, including ACLs, TLS, SASL, and IAM-based auth on MSK
Deep expertise in Kafka internals, including broker tuning, partitioning, replication, and fault tolerance
Contributions to Kafka-related open source projects or community involvement
Experience with Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams, or other stream processing frameworks
Experience guiding cross-team adoption of Kafka in microservice architectures
Experience in operating distributed systems
Working experience in a full remote environment
Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in Computer Science or a related field

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About PayPay

PayPay, a FinTech company that has achieved more than 69M users (as of May 2025) within around six years since its launch in 2018, is rapidly expanding its business scale as a payment platform used by approximately one out of every two smartphone users in Japan.

The company has a diverse team of professionals from more than 50 countries and is building a world-class engineering organization.

PayPay's biggest competitor is "cash". They are seeking people who can accept this challenge positively, brush up on the product at a tremendous speed that other companies could never achieve, and who are passionate about promoting and spreading such a financial life platform in a short time along with professionalism.

Japanese Language Policy
At PayPay, there is a mixture of Japanese and English spoken. Around 80% of their product team’s discussions happen in English, and they have technical interpreters and translators on staff to facilitate any translation necessary. Some members can speak both English and Japanese, but some can only speak either English or Japanese.

PayPay doesn’t have an official shared language, but in practice English tends to be the primary language used for internal communications and technical discussions like code reviews.

Instead of requiring that everyone be able to speak a specific language, PayPay expects an ability to communicate with mutual respect and a drive to ensure that you’re understood. The product team values proactive communication highly.
Visa Sponsorship
PayPay sponsors visas for applicants from overseas.
Paid Leave
- Days Off: Saturdays and Sundays. National holidays. Year-end and New Year holidays.
- Holidays: Annual paid leave, congratulatory or condolence leave, maternity leave and etc.
Benefits
🌎 Translation/interpretation support (EN<>JP)

🧡 Support for translation or other administrative tasks in Japanese

👍 Support from bilingual PIC for engineers

🇯🇵 Free Japanese lessons on company time

💻 PC and phone are given (based on the company’s regulations)

👩‍🎓 Training Program: We have various training programs for different kinds of needs

💜 Social security/insurance benefits included

💛 Defined contribution pension system (TBC)

🏥 Health insurance

🚃 Transportation coverage (up to ¥150,000/mo)
Engineer Interview Process
PayPay's Hiring process are as below:
- Application Review (English CV is required)
- Coding Test or Take Home Assignment (only applied to required positions)
- 3-4 Interviews (including both technical and behavioral interviews)
- Offer Meeting
Remote Work
PayPay is committed to maintaining a "Day 1" mindset, bringing to life visions of the future that no one else can even imagine. At PayPay, we provide an environment where everyone can deliver outstanding performance as professionals, through a flexible work style that includes remote and office.
Work style
- Super Flex Time with no core time
- In principle, from 9:00am-5:45pm (actual working hours: 7h45m + 1h break)