Kafka/Flink Data Streaming Platform Engineer — US Remote

Greyker is a small, growing company doing serious platform engineering work with a range of clients tackling complex, high-scale data infrastructure challenges. We're looking for a hands-on engineer with deep experience in Kafka, Flink, and Kubernetes who is comfortable working as part of a distributed team.

You'll work on real production systems at scale, in environments where your expertise will be put to immediate use alongside strong peers. The nature of each engagement varies — what stays consistent is the quality of the work and the people around you.

We'll be transparent with you from the start: we may not meet every compensation expectation. But as a Greyker team member you'll be treated with honesty and respect, your voice will matter, and we're committed to keeping you engaged and growing as the company expands. If that sounds like the right trade, we'd like to hear from you.

Full requirements are detailed below. If this role fits your background, please apply via Easy Apply. Note that Greyker is not able to sponsor work visas at this time.

The Role

As a Data Streaming Platform Engineer at Greyker, you will design and implement scalable, high-performance data streaming platforms for enterprise clients across a range of industries. You will own the technical delivery of Kafka and Flink-based solutions from architecture through deployment, working closely with client data engineers, software developers, and infrastructure teams. Depending on the engagement, you may also spend time embedded at a client site as a longer-term technical resource.

This is a hands-on role. You will be expected to write code, configure infrastructure, troubleshoot production issues, and communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

Data Streaming and Pipeline Engineering

You will deploy and manage data streaming platforms using infrastructure as code tools such as Terraform and Ansible onto Kubernetes and other cluster environments. You will develop and optimize real-time data pipelines for event-driven applications, configure and tune Kafka Connectors, and implement stream processing workflows using Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, and Apache Spark. You will integrate these frameworks into end-to-end pipelines and monitor and optimize their performance across client environments.

Infrastructure and Automation

You will implement and maintain infrastructure as code across cloud and on-premise environments, automate deployment and scaling of Kafka clusters and Flink jobs, and manage CI/CD pipelines for streaming applications. Cloud platforms you may work with include AWS, GCP, and Azure, as well as managed services such as AWS MSK and Confluent Cloud.

Observability and Performance

You will build and configure monitoring, logging, and alerting systems using tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, and the ELK Stack across Kubernetes, Kafka, and Flink ecosystems. You will conduct benchmark tests, troubleshoot latency and throughput issues, and optimize brokers, job managers, and task managers for performance and scalability.

Collaboration and Communication

Greyker engagements are client-facing. You will work directly with enterprise engineering teams, provide technical guidance on Kafka and Flink implementations, and document system architecture, processes, and best practices in a form that client teams can maintain after the engagement ends.

Qualifications

We're looking for engineers who have done this work in production, not just in coursework or side projects. Specifically, we require three or more years of hands-on experience building large-scale solutions on Kubernetes, five or more years working with Unix/Linux systems and internet protocols, two or more years managing Apache Kafka clusters in production including topic design, Kafka Connect, and Kafka Streams, and at least one year working with Apache Flink including stream processing and stateful computations. Three or more years in DevOps, cloud infrastructure, or platform engineering rounds out the core experience we're looking for.

On the technical side, you should be proficient in Java, Python, or Scala, and have working knowledge of data serialization formats such as Avro, Protobuf, and JSON, infrastructure as code tools including Terraform and Ansible, and big data technologies such as Elasticsearch and Cassandra. A bachelor's or master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field is preferred but not required for candidates with equivalent demonstrable experience.

Because this is a consulting role, communication matters as much as technical depth. You should be comfortable presenting your work, explaining complex systems to non-engineers, and operating with a degree of autonomy on client sites.

What We Offer

Compensation commensurate with experience. Exposure to a wide variety of enterprise environments, industries, and technical challenges within a short span of time — the kind of breadth that is difficult to accumulate in a single-employer career. A small, transparent team where your contributions are visible and your perspective is heard. And the opportunity to grow with Greyker as we expand our client base and consulting practice.