---
title: 'Sr Staff Distributed Systems Engineer, Platform - Storage at Kentik'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sr-staff-distributed-systems-engineer-platform-storage-kentik-united-states-j8z9ww383tcp'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Sr Staff Distributed Systems Engineer, Platform - Storage at Kentik

- **Company:** Kentik
- **Location:** United States
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-02-19
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://www.kentik.com/careers/jobs/4661190005/?gh_jid=4661190005

## Job description

## 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 recruiting@kentik.com.

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

## About Kentik

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Kentik is a network intelligence platform that provides observability, monitoring, and anomaly detection for modern infrastructure teams.
- **Entity Type**: Private (venture-backed)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2014 (originally as CloudHelix, renamed to Kentik in 2015)
- **Founders**: Avi Freedman, Ian Applegate, Ian Pye, Justin Biegel

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Network observability, network monitoring, and cybersecurity (anomaly detection)
- **Target customers**: Enterprise and SMB infrastructure teams, including NOC, DevOps, and security teams; heavily used by AI companies and large-scale network operators
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “Make life awesome for people building and running the connected world.”

## Products & Services
- **Kentik Network Intelligence Platform (SaaS)**: A cloud-based platform that ingests NetFlow, sFlow, IPFIX, and other network telemetry data to provide real-time visibility, performance monitoring, cost optimization, and security analytics across data center, cloud, and internet environments.
- **Kentik AI**: An AI-powered assistant that helps quickly troubleshoot network issues, reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR), and automate root cause analysis.
- **DDoS Detection & Mitigation**: Built-in anomaly detection for identifying and responding to distributed denial-of-service attacks.
- **Peering & Traffic Cost Analysis**: Tools to optimize internet transit costs and peering arrangements.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding amount not disclosed in the search results; however, the company is backed by notable venture firms (see below).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Third Point Ventures, as well as individual investors such as Jamie Barnett (Managing Partner, Third Point Ventures) and Robert Schwartz. Partners include major cloud providers and enterprise tools (Slack integration, etc.).
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - “8 out of 10 of the world’s largest enterprise AI companies use Kentik.”
  - Claims 400% faster troubleshooting and $4M saved annually per case study.
  - Home to Doug Madory’s internet routing analysis practice (previously at Renesys/Dyn/Oracle) – a key talent acquisition.
  - Active hiring: 9 open positions on LinkedIn as of the search date.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Purpose-built data engine**: Based on a clustered datastore modeled on Google’s Dremel, enabling high-scale, low-latency analysis of network telemetry.
- **Deep expertise**: Founded by network operators who built parts of the global internet; employs leading internet routing analysts.
- **Unified observability**: Covers data center, cloud, and internet-edge visibility in a single platform, reducing tool sprawl.
- **AI-native**: Kentik AI integrated directly into the platform to accelerate troubleshooting.

## Strategic Focus
- Expanding AI-powered automation and self-service troubleshooting for non-specialist teams (support, NOC, app teams).
- Deepening integrations with cloud providers and IT service management tools.
- Growing enterprise and AI infrastructure customer base.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Remote-first (work from where you are) with a strong emphasis on autonomy and making an impact. The company describes itself as “built by nerds/experts” and values bringing your “full self, quirks and all.”
- **Remote/Hybrid Policy**: Fully remote environment; office in San Francisco but distributed team.
- **Benefits** (from careers page):
  - 100% employer-paid health, dental, and vision for U.S. employees and dependents.
  - Employer-funded health reimbursement account and monthly wellness stipend.
  - Employer-paid short- and long-term disability, paid parental/family/medical leave.
  - Open PTO, quarterly wellness day, and all public holidays.
  - Home office reimbursement plus monthly phone/internet stipend.
  - 401(k) with charitable donation matching.
- **Engineering Culture**: Focus on solving complex network problems at scale; use of modern tech stack (KDE storage, platform engineering). Recent job postings include Sr Staff Backend Engineer, Staff SRE, and Sr Product Manager.

## Sources
1. [kentik.com](https://www.kentik.com/)
2. [kentik.com/careers](https://www.kentik.com/careers/)
3. [kentik.com/company](https://www.kentik.com/company/)
4. [en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentik)
5. [linkedin.com/company/kentik](https://www.linkedin.com/company/kentik)

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