Remote Data Engineering Specialist – Distributed Big Data Pipelines & Analytics Infrastructure (L5)

About arenaflex

At arenaflex, our central mission is to engage the world through bold innovation and uncompromising quality. With a global subscriber base spanning more than 190 nations and an ever-expanding library of television series, documentaries, and feature films delivered in dozens of languages, arenaflex is reimagining the entertainment experience from end to end. We are not simply a streaming service — we are a technology powerhouse transforming how stories are produced, distributed, and discovered. Every minute of every day, our engineering teams are pushing the boundaries of large-scale distributed systems, cloud-native video delivery, and customer-centric product innovation.

Behind the curtain of every recommendation, every content acquisition decision, and every operational insight lies a vast and complex data ecosystem. arenaflex prides itself on being a data-driven organization where evidence trumps opinion and where quantitative reasoning guides the path forward. From Subscriber Growth and Finance to Product, Content, and Studio Operations, our data touches every facet of the business. The remarkable individuals who design, build, and maintain the systems that collect, transform, and surface this data are the lifeblood of our decision-making engine. We are looking for talented, curious, and driven engineers to join this elite group of practitioners and help shape the next generation of our data platform.

The Opportunity

Data Engineering at arenaflex is not a back-office function — it is a strategic discipline that powers the analytics, experimentation, and machine learning capabilities used by executives, product managers, content strategists, and engineers across the company. As a Data Engineer (L5) at arenaflex, you will design and build the systems that process terabytes — and eventually petabytes — of data every single day. Your work will range from batch-oriented data pipelines that produce the business metrics reported to Wall Street, to near real-time processing services that feed directly into the personalization features our members interact with.

This role requires an individual who possesses both the depth of a strong software engineer and the curiosity of a data scientist. You will partner closely with business stakeholders, applied scientists, and product engineers to understand the questions that need answering, and then translate those questions into robust, well-modeled, and highly performant data assets. If you have ever wanted to work on a system where correctness, freshness, and scale all matter equally, this is the role for you.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and maintain highly scalable batch and streaming data pipelines that ingest, transform, and serve data from a wide variety of operational and behavioral sources.
• Design and evolve dimensional and normalized data models that power self-service analytics, executive dashboards, financial reporting, and machine learning training datasets.
• Collaborate with data scientists and machine learning engineers to productionize features, ensuring they are available at scale with appropriate freshness, lineage, and quality controls.
• Partner with product engineering teams to instrument event streams that capture meaningful user interactions across the arenaflex platform.
• Champion data quality by implementing validation frameworks, monitoring, and alerting that detect anomalies before they reach downstream consumers.
• Contribute to the evolution of arenaflex’s internal data platform by identifying reusable patterns, authoring libraries, and mentoring peers on best practices.
• Participate in design reviews, code reviews, and architectural discussions to raise the technical bar of the broader data engineering community.
• Document your work thoroughly — from data dictionaries and entity-relationship diagrams to operational runbooks — to ensure knowledge is never siloed.
• Operate with a high degree of autonomy, owning projects end-to-end from ideation through production rollout and long-term maintenance.

Essential Qualifications

• A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Information Systems, Mathematics, or a closely related technical discipline.
• Proficiency in at least one major programming language such as Java, Scala, or Python, with hands-on experience writing production-grade code.
• Strong working knowledge of SQL and relational database concepts, including query optimization, indexing strategies, and schema design.
• Demonstrated depth in at least one of the following areas: distributed data processing, programming of data services, or advanced data modeling.
• Familiarity with modern big data technologies such as Apache Spark, Apache Flink, Kafka, or comparable frameworks.
• Experience working with web-scale datasets and an understanding of the unique engineering challenges that come with petabyte-scale data volumes.
• Solid grasp of software engineering fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, concurrency, and testing.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts to non-technical partners.
• Self-starter mentality with the ability to thrive in a fast-paced, loosely structured environment where requirements evolve quickly.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience operating data infrastructure in a major cloud environment such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Familiarity with workflow orchestration tools like Airflow, Dagster, or Prefect.
• Exposure to data lakehouse architectures, table formats such as Iceberg or Delta, and modern query engines like Trino or Presto.
• Understanding of experimentation platforms, A/B testing methodologies, and causal inference concepts.
• Experience supporting machine learning workflows, including feature stores and model serving infrastructure.
• A track record of contributing to open-source data projects or publishing technical content in the data engineering community.

Skills and Competencies for Success

Success at arenaflex requires more than just technical chops — it demands a particular mindset. We look for engineers who write elegant, well-tested code and who feel a sense of ownership over the systems they build. You should be deeply curious about why a system behaves the way it does, and you should be relentless in pursuit of root causes. Strong data intuition is non-negotiable: you should be able to look at a metric and quickly sense whether something is off, and then methodically track down the source. Equally important is your ability to collaborate. You will be working alongside some of the brightest engineers, scientists, and business minds in the industry, and your willingness to share knowledge, give and receive feedback, and elevate those around you will be the hallmark of your career here.

Career Growth and Learning Opportunities

Joining arenaflex as a Data Engineer at the L5 level means joining a company that invests heavily in the growth of its people. You will have access to internal mentorship programs, technical guilds, and speaker series featuring the leading engineers and scientists shaping the future of streaming and data. We actively encourage our data engineers to publish blog posts, speak at conferences, and contribute to open-source projects. Whether you aspire to grow into a Staff Engineer, transition into machine learning engineering, or move into a technical leadership role, the career trajectory at arenaflex is yours to design.

Work Environment and Culture

The arenaflex culture is built on a foundation of freedom and responsibility. We hire exceptionally talented individuals, give them enormous latitude, and hold them to exceptionally high standards. We eschew rigid processes in favor of context-driven decision-making, and we believe that great ideas can come from anywhere in the organization. Our culture deck — famous throughout the tech industry — outlines values like candor, selflessness, and curiosity that continue to guide how we work together. As a remote-eligible hire based in the United States, you will enjoy the flexibility of working from home while still having opportunities to collaborate in person at our Los Gatos, California headquarters for team offsites, planning sessions, and cross-functional gatherings.

Compensation Philosophy and Benefits

arenaflex employs a unique and transparent compensation philosophy. Your total compensation consists solely of an annual base salary, with no bonuses or commissions. Each year, you decide how much of your compensation you would like to receive in cash versus equity in the company, allowing you to tailor your package to your personal financial goals. To determine your individual pay, we consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience relative to the top of the market.

Beyond compensation, arenaflex provides an industry-leading benefits package designed to support your whole life, including:

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance plans
• Robust mental health support resources, including access to therapy and counseling services
• A 401(k) retirement plan with generous employer matching
• A flexible stock option program that lets you share in the long-term success of the company
• Disability, life, and serious injury insurance coverage
• Health savings accounts (HSA) and flexible spending accounts (FSA)
• Family-forming benefits, including parental leave and adoption assistance
• Generous paid time off — full-time hourly employees accrue 35 days annually for vacation, holidays, and sick leave, while full-time salaried employees enjoy flexible downtime from day one

How to Apply

If you are a builder at heart, if you love the challenge of wrangling massive datasets into elegant and trustworthy systems, and if you want your work to directly shape the experience of hundreds of millions of members around the world, we want to hear from you. Please submit your resume, a cover letter explaining why you are uniquely suited for this role, and any relevant portfolio materials through our official careers portal. Selected candidates will be invited to a multi-stage interview process designed to assess your technical depth, your collaborative style, and your alignment with the arenaflex culture.

At arenaflex, we believe that entertainment can change the world — and the engineers who power our data platform are central to that mission. Join us, and help us build the future of streaming.