Senior Distributed Systems Engineer (L4) – Cloud Data Platform & Large-Scale Data Infrastructure | Remote Part-Time Opportunity

About arenaflex

At arenaflex, our mission is to engage audiences across the globe and continuously redefine how entertainment is envisioned, created, and delivered to a worldwide community. We currently stream content in more than 30 languages across 190 countries, reaching over 220 million paid subscribers, and we are boldly expanding into new forms of entertainment such as gaming and interactive experiences. To power this global phenomenon, arenaflex relies on a world-class data ecosystem that fuels everything from content recommendations to operational decision-making.

The Data Platform organization at arenaflex empowers the entire business to unlock the value of data in countless ways. We build integrated data platforms, tools, and infrastructure that enable every business function at arenaflex to make confident, data-driven decisions. From the foundations of how data is stored, to the pipelines that move petabytes of information, to the query engines that surface insights in milliseconds, our teams do the heavy lifting to make it simple, safe, and effective for colleagues to work with data. We strive to set the industry standard in building elite data infrastructure as arenaflex leads the way in becoming the most popular and ubiquitous destination for global digital entertainment.

We are searching for distributed systems engineers to help evolve and grow our platform as we pursue our ambitious goal of reaching 500 million members worldwide. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team that brings fresh perspectives as we tackle the next generation of challenges. We are also open to remote candidates—we value what you can do, from anywhere in the U.S.

Position Overview

We are hiring a Distributed Systems Engineer (L4) to join our Data Platform team on a part-time, remote basis. In this role, you will design, build, and operate the large-scale distributed systems that power arenaflex's data infrastructure. You will work closely with product managers, engineers, and technical program managers across the company to architect resilient, high-throughput, and highly available systems that operate at unprecedented scale. This is a unique opportunity to contribute to a platform used by hundreds of millions of people while enjoying the flexibility of a part-time schedule.

Key Focus Areas on the Data Platform Team

Database Access Platform

The Database Access Platform team builds and operates a flexible query gateway that powers data abstractions operating at sub-millisecond latencies, allowing arenaflex microservices to efficiently store, consume, and manage their data. This team holds significant responsibility for enabling microservices to meet their continually evolving data needs. The team is passionate about distributed data infrastructure technology, is active in the open source community, and believes in operating what it builds. It is a small team responsible for business-critical systems and is committed to a culture of feedback and engineering excellence.

Data Platform Infrastructure

The Data Platform Infrastructure team serves as the foundation for our internal data platforms. Our shared infrastructure and tooling enable arenaflex to quickly deliver cutting-edge data and analytics systems to the rest of the organization without building bespoke foundations for each new system. To accomplish this, we develop high-impact framework, governance, and operational systems tuned for the demands of running data systems at scale. Many of our tools and systems are written in Python, making this an excellent team for engineers who enjoy working across multiple languages.

Data Movement and Processing

This team provides a self-service, abstracted pathway product that enables varied user personas across arenaflex to meet their low-latency data movement and processing needs. It offers abstraction over complex real-time frameworks such as Kafka and Flink, delivers a templated processing experience, and invests in operational automation, reliability, and tooling for predictable data quality.

Big Data Compute

Responsible for providing the cloud-native platform for distributed data processing at arenaflex, this team is essential to batch data processing on the Data Platform. It offers support for Spark, performs ETL into the petabytes-scale data warehouse, and provides access through Spark and Presto/TrinoDB. The team also delivers sub-second latency for a specific class of queries using Druid. We are seeking outstanding talent with experience in Spark, Presto/Trino, Druid, Iceberg, and distributed database systems in general. Work in this group involves solving some of the most interesting and challenging problems in operating data at scale, building features, and contributing to open source communities to shape the future of these projects.

Big Data Orchestration

This team provides the platform for designing, organizing, and executing big data jobs and workflows in a self-service manner. These platforms include the critical services that run all ETL and ML jobs on the Big Data systems at arenaflex. These fully distributed systems are continually evolving to support arenaflex scale using state-of-the-art technology. We are moving toward event-driven and intelligent orchestration that requires minimal user input or intervention.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect and build a robust, scalable, and highly available distributed infrastructure supporting mission-critical workloads.
• Solve real business needs at massive scale by applying strong programming and analytical problem-solving skills.
• Design and develop resilient web services and APIs that power the data platform.
• Drive cross-functional initiatives and collaborate with engineers, product managers, and technical program managers across teams.
• Communicate arenaflex's experiences with the broader open source community and contribute to arenaflex open source projects.
• Build, operate, and maintain fault-tolerant distributed systems capable of handling petabytes of data.
• Improve performance, scalability, and reliability through careful design, code review, and observability practices.
• Mentor peers and contribute to a culture of engineering excellence, feedback, and continuous learning.

Essential Qualifications

• 2+ years of experience building large-scale distributed system components or applications in production environments.
• Proficiency in designing and developing RESTful web services.
• Hands-on experience building and operating scalable, fault-tolerant distributed systems.
• Strong proficiency in Java or another object-oriented programming language.
• Comfort with multi-threading and concurrent programming challenges.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with big data ecosystems such as Spark, Kafka, Flink, Druid, Iceberg, or Presto/Trino.
• Familiarity with Python and willingness to work across multiple languages.
• Experience contributing to or maintaining open source projects.
• Knowledge of cloud-native architectures, microservices, and modern data infrastructure patterns.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to collaborate across geographically distributed teams.
• Self-directed mindset with the ability to thrive in a remote work environment.

Skills and Competencies for Success

• Systems thinking: Ability to reason about complex, distributed architectures and the tradeoffs involved in scaling them.
• Problem-solving: Strong analytical skills for diagnosing performance bottlenecks, race conditions, and resilience gaps.
• Collaboration: Comfortable working across teams and disciplines in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment.
• Ownership: A bias for action and accountability for the systems you build and operate.
• Continuous learning: Curiosity and passion for staying current with emerging technologies in distributed systems and data infrastructure.

Career Growth and Learning Opportunities

Joining arenaflex as a Distributed Systems Engineer offers a rare opportunity to grow your career while working on some of the most demanding infrastructure challenges in the industry. You will be exposed to petabyte-scale data systems, contribute to open source communities, and collaborate with world-class engineers. Part-time work hours are designed to be flexible, allowing you to balance other professional or personal commitments while continuing to develop your skills on real, high-impact projects. We invest in our people through mentorship, knowledge sharing, and access to internal learning resources to help you advance along your desired career path.

Work Environment and Company Culture

arenaflex fosters a culture of freedom and responsibility, empowering engineers to make informed decisions while trusting them to deliver exceptional results. We believe in working what we own, valuing transparency, candid feedback, and high-performance teams. As a remote, part-time team member, you will be fully integrated into our engineering culture, participating in design reviews, planning sessions, and team rituals. We are deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we believe that varied perspectives drive better engineering outcomes and a stronger workplace.

Compensation, Perks, and Benefits

We offer a competitive compensation package designed to attract top engineering talent. For this part-time, remote role, the expected pay rate is $26 per hour, based on 8 hours of work per day within a flexible schedule. In addition to base compensation, part-time employees of arenaflex may be eligible for select benefits, including:

• Flexible remote work arrangement from anywhere in the U.S.
• Access to internal learning platforms, mentorship, and engineering communities.
• Opportunities to contribute to high-visibility open source projects.
• A supportive, inclusive, and high-performance engineering culture.
• Networking and collaboration opportunities with senior engineers and leaders across arenaflex.

How to Apply

If you are a distributed systems engineer with a passion for large-scale infrastructure, a love for elegant architecture, and a desire to make an impact on a platform that entertains hundreds of millions of people around the world, we want to hear from you. This is your opportunity to join a team that builds the future of data at arenaflex—all from the comfort of a remote, part-time schedule.

Take the next step in your career and apply today to become part of the arenaflex Data Platform team.