Sr Staff Distributed Systems Engineer, Platform - Storage

Who we are

Kentik is the network intelligence platform for modern infrastructure teams. Unlike traditional monitoring and observability tools, we demystify complex network operations, enabling organizations to deliver applications and innovation at scale. Built by network experts to make critical insight accessible to every engineer, Kentik is the real-time source of truth that understands every network in context — from data center to cloud to the internet. This single platform unifies and correlates cloud, device, flow, and synthetic data to turn telemetry into action. Market leaders like Akamai, Booking.com, Dropbox, and Zoom rely on Kentik to run, manage, and optimize their networks.

What we do

Kentik's Platform Engineering group is responsible for storing, enriching, and querying traffic metadata and metrics from the world's largest networks. Our platform actively monitors infrastructure, triggers automated responses to outages and attacks, and is critical to delivering complete network observability to our customers.

To do this, our single platform unifies and correlates cloud, device, flow, and synthetic data to turn telemetry into action. This means our storage layer must ingest trillions of records and serve hundreds of thousands of queries each day with absolute reliability. The scale and complexity we operate at isn't just large; it’s industry-defining.

The Platform Engineering group consists of three teams: Ingest, Storage and Query, and Network Data enrichments. Our Storage Team is looking for a technical leader to help us design and scale the next generation of our high-performance, data-intensive storage layer.

What you'll do

As a Sr Staff Engineer, you will co-own the technical vision for our storage services. This is a role with high autonomy, high visibility, and deep technical impact. You will:

• Help define and lead the execution of a multi-year technical roadmap for Storage, pushing the boundaries of industry-leading query speeds
• Design tiered storage strategies (Hot/Warm/Cold), TTL-based data eviction, and optimization strategies that handle massive, real-time data influx.
• Work closely with product, support, and other engineering teams to drive platform-wide storage standards, while leveling up the engineers around you.
• Thrive in our remote-first, highly collaborative culture where independence and clear communication are celebrated

What you'll bring

Studies have shown that some candidates tend to apply to jobs only if they meet 100% of the qualifications. We encourage you to apply if you meet most of the criteria - even if you don’t match all of the qualifications, your skills and experience could be valuable in this role!

• Deep Distributed Systems Expertise: You have a proven track record of designing, building, and scaling high-throughput, concurrent data pipelines
• Systems Programming Fluent: You love working in languages optimized for performance, specifically Go, C, or Rust
• Storage Layer Knowledge: You have experience working closely with (or building) Timeseries Databases, object storage, or distributed filesystems
• Architectural Pragmatism: You know how to balance cutting-edge engineering with operational stability and business needs
• Strong Communication Skills: You can articulate complex technical tradeoffs clearly to both engineering peers and non-technical stakeholders
• Growth Mindset: You have a passion to grow personally and actively contribute to a high-performing team culture

Our tech stack

• Our core data engine and platform are primarily written in Go
• We use Node.js + Express for application serving, and React as our primary UI framework
• Tooling: JS and Python for tooling and scripting.
• Infrastructure & Messaging: Kafka for streaming pipelines, Redis for caching, and Postgres/MySQL for metadata.
• APIs & Routing: REST/JSON and gRPC endpoints via HAProxy and Envoy.
• Operations: GitHub for source control, Jenkins for CI/CD, and Jira for project tracking.

What we offer

Kentik is a fully remote company that operates globally. We seek professionals that will help us thrive as an organization, and in turn, to broaden and enhance your career. We’re very thorough in the interview process to understand your skills and how they will relate to your successful growth here at Kentik. Our compensation philosophy encompasses a fair program for all in order to attract, engage and retain talented individuals who will drive our business and wow our customers.

The compensation range for this position is: $200,000– $245,000. This range reflects the low and high end of the U.S. compensation range Kentik reasonably and generally expects to pay the hired candidate in this role. The actual compensation offered may be lower or higher than the stated range depending on various factors, including but not limited to:

• Experience with the skill sets required for success
• Demonstrated competencies and potential 
• A geographic market-based approach

Come work with us

The true meaning of Kentik is visibility. We’re committed to making sure everyone feels empowered to use their voice, has a sense of belonging, and is represented at Kentik. 

We don’t look for individuals who fit the culture, but those who will continue to add to the culture.
We encourage everyone to apply, especially those individuals who are underrepresented in the industry: people of color, LGBTQI+ community, women, individuals with disabilities (both seen and unseen), veterans, and people of any age or family status. 

Kentik is committed to creating an inclusive interview process. If you require a reasonable accommodation during the application or interview process, please reach out to [email protected].

Come as you are!
You will be working at a fast-growing, well-funded startup alongside industry thought leaders and network aficionados as we build the future of observability and set the high bar for how network operations and digital businesses should run. With a competitive salary and amazing benefits on top of the meaningful and challenging projects you’ll take on, we’re sure you’ll enjoy joining the Kentik team.

#li-remote