Distributed Systems Architect: Bare-Metal and High-Scale

analogai; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 500,000 - 900,000; Full time

Job summary

Analog builds industrial intelligence infrastructure for the physical world. This is a full‑time, on‑site Distributed Systems Architect role focused on architecture for on‑premises, air‑gapped environments at petabyte scale.

You’ll own clustering, replication, and failover topologies across messaging, streaming, and databases, and deliver precise runbooks for Terraform and Ansible automation to empower the DevOps team.

Qualifications

• 10+ years architecting and operating distributed infrastructure in production.
• Expert-levelKafka or Redpanda clustering and operational lifecycle at scale.
• Deep Linux systems engineering including networking, storage, and NUMA.
• Proven HA database clustering without cloud LB.
• Experience deploying software-defined storage on physical hardware.
• Able to produce implementation-ready blueprints and runbooks for DevOps automation.

Responsibilities

• Open-source infrastructure mapping across messaging, streaming, and DB layers.
• Design multi-node clustering, rack-aware replication, and quorum topologies.
• Tune Linux and hardware for petabyte-scale workloads.
• Deliver precise, implementation-ready blueprints and runbooks for automation.

Skills

Distributed infrastructure

Kafka / Redpanda

Linux kernel tuning

HA databases

Software-defined storage

Blueprints & runbooks

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

Ceph

MinIO

Patroni

ClickHouse

Job description

Distributed Systems Architect: Bare-Metal and High-Scale

You will own the architectural blueprints for Analog’s on-premises open-source infrastructure, designing the clustering, replication, and failover topologies across messaging, streaming, and database layers that our DevOps team then automates at scale across client deployments. This is a hands-on, implementation-grade architecture role where the quality of your output directly determines whether a physically isolated or air-gapped client environment survives hardware failure at petabyte scale.

What You’ll Do

Open-Source Infrastructure Mapping

• Map Analog’s Azure PaaS components to open-source equivalents: Event Hub to Kafka/Redpanda, IoT Hub to EMQX, ADX to ClickHouse or Apache Druid, and Blob Storage to Ceph/MinIO
• Produce side-by-side equivalence assessments documenting feature gaps, operational differences, and migration risk for each component transition
• Validate client hardware specifications and assess compliance with air-gap security requirements prior to each deployment

Cluster and Topology Design

• Design multi-node clustering, rack‑aware replication, and quorum topologies for bare‑metal Kafka/Redpanda and PostgreSQL (Patroni) clusters
• Design resilience protocols for hardware and network switch failures in physically isolated or air‑gapped client environments
• Architect RocksDB state backend tuning for stateful Apache Flink workloads, including compaction strategy, block cache sizing, and write‑ahead log configuration

Linux and Hardware Optimization

• Tune Linux kernel parameters, NUMA bindings, network ring buffers, and NVMe I/O scheduler configurations to eliminate hardware bottlenecks under petabyte‑scale write workloads
• Define CPU affinity, IRQ balancing, and huge page configurations for latency‑sensitive broker and database processes
• Author reproducible benchmark harnesses to validate configuration changes against client hardware before production rollout

Blueprints and DevOps Enablement

• Deliver precise, implementation‑ready configuration blueprints and runbooks for Terraform and Ansible automation, documents the DevOps team can execute without architectural interpretation
• Maintain a library of parameterized reference architectures covering single‑rack, multi‑rack, and geographically distributed bare‑metal topologies
• Conduct pre‑deployment reviews of client hardware specs and provide go/no‑go assessments with remediation guidance

What You’ll Bring

• 10+ years architecting and operating distributed infrastructure at TB to PB scale in production environments
• Expert‑level Kafka or Redpanda clustering: partitioning strategy, ISR tuning, consumer group management, compaction policies, and operational lifecycle at scale
• Deep Linux systems engineering: kernel networking subsystems (TCP buffer tuning, interrupt coalescing), storage fabrics, and NUMA‑aware process binding
• Proven track record deploying HA database clusters without cloud load balancers: Patroni, Pacemaker, or equivalent in production
• Experience deploying software‑defined storage (Ceph, MinIO) on physical hardware in production, including CRUSH maps, erasure coding, and performance tuning
• Ability to produce implementation‑ready blueprints and runbooks; your output must be directly actionable by a DevOps automation team without architectural interpretation

About Analog

Analog builds industrial intelligence infrastructure for the physical world. We deliver high‑throughput data pipelines, real‑time analytics, and edge‑to‑cloud connectivity for mission‑critical environments where cloud dependency is not an option. Our clients operate in regulated, air‑gapped, and physically demanding settings and they depend on us to get the infrastructure right from day one.

This is a full‑time, on‑site role.