Senior Kubernetes Engineer: Data Platform at Scale

nxwave; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

nxwave is hiring a Senior Kubernetes Engineer to design and scale a Kubernetes-native data platform powering large-scale data ingestion, transformation, and analytics workloads. This hands-on role sits at the intersection of cloud-native platform engineering and big-data systems, delivering reliable, observable compute at scale.

You will design platform services, implement Spark-based pipelines, manage S3 storage patterns, and enhance metadata governance, observability, and cost efficiency.

Qualifications

• Hands-on Kubernetes experience with operators, CRDs, or advanced workloads.
• Background in data platforms or big-data ecosystems.
• Experience with Spark and modern table formats (Delta / Iceberg).
• Deep understanding of S3-based storage patterns.
• Familiarity with metadata, data governance, or lineage tooling.
• Experience with Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry or similar.
• Ability to operate in production environments with reliability and scale.

Responsibilities

• Design and build Kubernetes-centric platform services for distributed data workloads.
• Implement scalable data processing patterns integrated with object storage (S3).
• Develop and optimise data ingestion and transformation pipelines (Spark-based).
• Build and maintain metadata, lineage, and governance capabilities.
• Improve platform observability using metrics, logs, and tracing.
• Collaborate with platform, data engineering, and infrastructure teams.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to best practices across Kubernetes and data platforms.

Skills

Kubernetes

Data platforms

Spark

Delta/Iceberg

S3 storage patterns

Data governance

Observability

Production reliability

Tools

Infra-as-Code

Cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP)

Kubernetes certifications

Job description

nxwave is hiring a Senior Kubernetes Engineer to design and scale a Kubernetes-native data platform powering large-scale data ingestion, transformation, and analytics workloads. This hands-on role sits at the intersection of cloud-native platform engineering and big-data systems, delivering reliable, observable compute at scale.

You will design platform services, implement Spark-based pipelines, manage S3 storage patterns, and enhance metadata governance, observability, and cost efficiency.