Distributed Systems Architect - Bare-Metal and High-Scale

About the role

Analog builds industrial intelligence infrastructure for the physical world: high-throughput data pipelines, real-time analytics and edge-to-cloud connectivity for clients who cannot rely on the cloud. This role designs the actual infrastructure underneath: clustering, replication and failover for messaging, streaming and databases on bare-metal hardware, even when clients have no internet access. It suits someone who has built infrastructure themselves rather than deployed managed cloud services.

Key responsibilities

• Map Analog's cloud components to their open-source, on-prem equivalents (Kafka/Redpanda, EMQX, ClickHouse/Druid, Ceph/MinIO) and document the gains and losses of each swap
• Design multi-node clustering, rack-aware replication and quorum topologies for bare-metal Kafka/Redpanda and Postgres (Patroni) clusters
• Tune Linux at a deep level: kernel parameters, NUMA bindings, NVMe I/O scheduling, CPU affinity and IRQ balancing to remove bottlenecks under petabyte-scale write loads
• Write implementation-ready blueprints and runbooks precise enough for the DevOps team to execute with Terraform and Ansible
• Review client hardware specs before deployment and give a clear go or no-go decision

Required profile

• 10+ years architecting and operating distributed infrastructure at TB to PB scale in production
• Hands-on, implementation-grade architect who does not need a large team around them to make architectural decisions
• Experience with bare-metal infrastructure; candidates whose experience is only on managed cloud services should not apply

Required skills

• Expert-level Kafka or Redpanda clustering: partitioning, ISR tuning, consumer groups, compaction and full operational lifecycle
• Deep Linux systems engineering: kernel networking, TCP buffer tuning, interrupt coalescing, storage fabrics, NUMA-aware process binding
• HA database clusters without a cloud load balancer (Patroni, Pacemaker or equivalent)
• Ceph or MinIO on physical hardware, including CRUSH maps, erasure coding and performance tuning
• Ability to write blueprints and runbooks that others can execute without your presence