Senior Manager, Kafka

Job Summary:

Job: Senior Manager, Kafka

Location: Los Angeles or Remote

CULTURE

We're fans who help fans everywhere get into the live events they love. A proud division of Live Nation Entertainment, Ticketmaster has changed the way the world connects with their favourite artists, teams, and shows, and we continue to shape innovation every day. We're not just selling tickets (though we do that better than anyone else), we're enriching lives one amazing experience at a time. And we think that's pretty amazing. If you're passionate about the magic of live entertainment like we are, and you want to work at a company dedicated to helping millions of fans experience it, we want to hear from you.

We have a 'Fan First' mindset, placing customers at the heart of everything we do. Whether working behind the scenes or engaging directly with the 'Fan' you will be part of a culture that supports and enriches the fan experience. Your work, our passiondelivering world class experiences - Fan First.

THE TEAM

A career at Ticketmaster will challenge and engage you. We support the creators and producers of shows and live performances, while connecting more passionate fans to these events. The pace here is fast, the atmosphere is fun and a passion for live events is a common thread that ties us together. As a global and growing business, we can truly offer a world of opportunities to expand your skills and develop your career. Visit any of our offices and you'll find a diverse mix of passionate employees, helping fans around the globe connect with the artists, teams and events they love. It truly is a unique and rewarding environment.

You will be part of the Global Developer Platform team, which delivers the tools, services, governance and support developers use at Ticketmaster to build, test, secure, and deploy to our fans and clients.

THE JOB

In the role of Senior Manager - Kafka Engineering, you will lead a team of skilled engineers that build our Kafka infrastructure and operate is a managed service to the large Ticketmaster Technology organization. You will be responsible for leading technical direction and implementation of the Kafka data streams platform. This critical service powers all aspects of our business from the sale of tickets for the world's largest live events to providing access into those events and more.

You will be accountable for ensuring that our hybrid cloud Kafka infrastructure is highly available, sustainable, performant, cost effective, and usable by hundreds of developers.

You will work closely with the VP - Developer Platform, software development leadership, technical operations leadership, architecture, PMO and vendors from around the globe to deliver these services.

WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING

• Lead and develop a team of systems engineers supporting Kafka, Kafka tools, and it's underlying infrastructure
• Work with the VP - Developer Platform to assess the needs of Software Engineering within the Kafka ecosystem
• Lead the daily operations of planning, engineering, and supporting Kafka services and infrastructure
• Establish, communicate, and advocate best practices and design patterns related to Kafka consumption
• Provide mentoring to other team members
• Assess and size effort associated with work backlog and participate in grooming
• Establish and execute a program of work to mature the streams processing service offering
• Collaborate with other operations team to ensure highly available service and response respective to developer support
• Interview and participate in building a team to establish a center of excellence and expertise in streams processing
• Participate in regular planning cycles to align business priorities to programs of work within your organization
• Provide recommendations, including resourcing, of strategic projects to mature and improve the service

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW (or TECHNICAL SKILLS/COMPETENCIES)

• Experience in a leadership role of a team providing managed services or large-scale operations teams
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Strong operational background running Kafka clusters at scale
• Knowledge of both physical/onprem systems and public cloud infrastructure
• Strong understanding of Kafka broker, connect, and topic tuning and architectures
• Strong understanding of Linux fundamentals as related to Kafka performance
  • Filesystem tuning and related kernel tuning and troubleshooting
  • Storage hardware and trade-offs
  • Network TCP stack tuning and troubleshooting
• Background in both Systems and Software Engineering
• Competent developing software in 1 or more of high level language
• Competent with configuration management in code/IaC including Ansible and Terraform
• Competent operating Java Runtime Environment (JRE) in large scale environments - ( runtime settings, JMX, troubleshooting, garbage collection, etc)
• Passionate about data driven operations; building and leveraging observability with tools such as Prometheus and Grafana
• Knowledge and experience of containers and Kubernetes cluster
• Hands on experience delivering complex software in an enterprise environment
• Experience working in a remote team across multiple regions and time zones
• Comfortable working with structured Change and Incident Management

YOU (BEHAVIOURAL SKILLS/COMPETENCIES)

• Highly collaborative leader with ability to communicate effectively in all formats
• Able to effectively communicate with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Able to motivate and mentor a team of skilled engineers
• Autonomous and proactive.
• Passionate about the value of broad scale streams processing
• Passionate about providing greater transparency to health and status of Ticketmaster systems
• Keenly empathetic to the day to day experience of software development teams
• A transparent communicator
• Deeply concerned with the security and compliance implications of your services and solutions
• Capable of delivering and accepting empathetic, constructive criticism with reports, peers, leadership and stakeholders
• Conscious of the developers need for speed of delivery and the enterprise need for governance and cost management
• Creates an environment of inclusion across multiple cultures and time zones
• Passionate about live entertainment and enabling the world's passions through live events

BENEFITS & PERKS

Our motto is 'Taking Care of Our Own' through 6 pillars of benefits:

HEALTH: Medical, Dental and Vision benefits for you and your family, including Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)

YOURSELF: Paid time off policy including holidays, sick time, and day off for your birthday, free concert tickets

WEALTH: 401(k) program with company match, Stock Program Reimbursement

FAMILY: New parent programs & support including caregiver leave and infertility support

CAREER: Tuition reimbursement, student loan repayment internal growth and development programs & trainings

OTHERS: Volunteer time off, crowdfunding network

LIFE AT TICKETMASTER

We are proud to be a part of Live Nation Entertainment, the world's largest live entertainment company.

Our vision at Ticketmaster is to connect people around the world to the live events they love. As the world's largest ticket marketplace and the leading global provider of enterprise tools and services for the live entertainment business, we are uniquely positioned to successfully deliver on that vision.

We do it all with an intense passion for Live and an inspiring and diverse culture driven by accessible leaders, attentive managers, and enthusiastic teams. If you're passionate about live entertainment like we are, and you want to work at a company dedicated to helping millions of fans experience it, we want to hear from you.

Our work is guided by our values:

Reliability - We understand that fans and clients rely on us to power their live event experiences, and we rely on each other to make it happen.

Teamwork - We believe individual achievement pales in comparison to the level of success that can be achieved by a team

Integrity - We are committed to the highest moral and ethical standards on behalf of the countless partners and stakeholders we represent

Belonging - We are committed to building a culture in which all people can be their authentic selves, have an equal voice and opportunities to thrive

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY

We are passionate and committed to our people and go beyond the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion. You will be working in an inclusive environment and be encouraged to bring your whole self to work. We will do all that we can to help you successfully balance your work and homelife. As a growing business we will encourage you to develop your professional and personal aspirations, enjoy new experiences, and learn from the talented people you will be working with. It's talent that matters to us and we encourage applications from people irrespective of their gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability status or caring responsibilities.

Ticketmaster strongly supports equal employment opportunity for all applicants regardless of age (40 and over), ancestry, color, religious creed (including religious dress and grooming practices), family and medical care leave or the denial of family and medical care leave, mental or physical disability (including HIV and AIDS), marital status, domestic partner status, medical condition (including cancer and genetic characteristics), genetic information, military and veteran status, political affiliation, national origin (including language use restrictions), citizenship, race, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and medical conditions related to pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding), gender, gender identity, and gender expression, sexual orientation, or any other basis protected by applicable federal, state or local law, rule, ordinance or regulation.

We will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of the Los Angeles Fair Chance Ordinance, San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the California Fair Chance Act and consistent with other similar and / or applicable laws in other areas.

We also afford equal employment opportunities to qualified individuals with a disability. For this reason, Ticketmaster will make reasonable accommodations for the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified individual with a disability who is an applicant consistent with its legal obligations to do so, including reasonable accommodations related to pregnancy in accordance with applicable local, state and / or federal law. As part of its commitment to make reasonable accommodations, Ticketmaster also wishes to participate in a timely, good faith, interactive process with a disabled applicant to determine effective reasonable accommodations, if any, which can be made in response to a request for accommodations. Applicants are invited to identify reasonable accommodations that can be made to assist them to perform the essential functions of the position they seek. Any applicant who requires an accommodation in order to perform the essential functions of the job should contact a Human Resources Representative to request the opportunity to participate in a timely interactive process. Ticketmaster will also provide reasonable religious accommodations on a case-by-case basis.

HIRING PRACTICES

The preceding job description has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this classification. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities, and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job.

Ticketmaster recruitment policies are designed to place the most highly qualified persons available in a timely and efficient manner. Ticketmaster may pursue all avenues available, including promotion from within, employee referrals, outside advertising, employment agencies, internet recruiting, job fairs, college recruiting and search firms.

#LI-Remote #LI-SM1

The expected compensation for this position in California is:

$163,000.00 USD - $204,000.00 USD

**Please note that the compensation information provided is a good faith estimate for this position only and is provided pursuant to the California Salary Transparency in Job Advertisements Law. It is estimated based on what a successful California applicant might be paid. It assumes that the successful candidate will be in California or perform the position from California. Similar positions located outside of California will not necessarily receive the same compensation. Live Nation takes into consideration a candidate's education, training, and experience, as well as the position's work location, expected quality and quantity of work, required travel (if any), external market and internal value, including seniority and merit systems, and internal pay alignment when determining the salary level for potential new employees. In compliance with the California Law, a potential new employee's salary history will not be used in compensation decisions.