About the Role / About the Job
Ready to apply for roles like this?
Unlock the company name and direct application link. Subscribers get instant access to fresh jobs across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, many with visa support.
Unlock employer & apply directly
The company builds industrial intelligence infrastructure for the physical world, focusing on high-throughput data pipelines, real-time analytics, and edge-to-cloud connectivity for clients in environments that require maximum reliability and have restricted internet access. You'll be instrumental in designing the actual infrastructure that supports complex systems in regulated environments, air-gapped sites, and physically demanding settings, ensuring that data loss is averted at petabyte scale.
What We're Looking For, and Why
We are seeking an experienced engineer who has built infrastructure rather than merely deployed managed services. We require someone who understands the nuts and bolts of distributed systems and has firsthand experience with failure modes that managed cloud providers often obscure. This role emphasizes the need for individuals who know how to design, implement, and support robust systems in the absence of external support.
What You'll Be Working On
- Mapping the company's cloud components to their open-source, on-prem equivalents (e.g., Kafka/Redpanda, EMQX, ClickHouse/Druid, Ceph/MinIO), and documenting the trade-offs of each transition.
- Designing multi-node clustering, rack-aware replication, and quorum topologies for bare-metal Kafka/Redpanda and Postgres (Patroni) clusters.
- Tuning Linux at advanced levels to eliminate hardware bottlenecks under petabyte-scale write loads, addressing kernel parameters, NUMA bindings, NVMe I/O scheduling, CPU affinity, and IRQ balancing.
- Creating precise implementation-ready blueprints and runbooks for the DevOps team, enabling smooth deployment using Terraform and Ansible without any ambiguity.
- Reviewing client hardware specifications pre-deployment and providing clear go/no-go recommendations.
What Makes This Role Different
In this role, there is no intermediary layer of management between your designs and the execution. You will receive direct feedback, as you'll be responsible for the integrity of your designs. The work you produce has a significant impact on the clients' operational success, meaning the quality of your architecture can prevent data loss during hardware failures. Additionally, you will contribute to a reusable library of reference architectures for future air-gapped deployments, enhancing overall efficiency and knowledge retention.
Skills We Need
- 10+ years in architecting and operating distributed infrastructure at terabyte to petabyte scale in production environments.
- Expert-level proficiency in Kafka or Redpanda clustering, including partitioning, ISR tuning, and full operational lifecycle management.
- Strong background in Linux systems engineering, particularly in kernel networking (TCP buffer tuning, interrupt coalescing), storage fabrics, and NUMA-aware process binding.
- Proven experience managing high-availability (HA) database clusters without the assistance of cloud load balancers (e.g., Patroni, Pacemaker).
- Hands-on experience deploying Ceph or MinIO on physical hardware, including CRUSH maps, erasure coding, and performance tuning.
- The ability to create clear blueprints and runbooks that other teams can execute independently.
Who Shouldn't Apply
This role is not suitable for individuals whose experience with distributed systems is limited to managed cloud services. Candidates who depend on structured processes or large teams for making architectural decisions will not find this position fitting, nor those who prefer oversight rather than hands-on involvement. This is a direct involvement role for a capable engineer who thrives under the pressure of ensuring client survival.
