Streaming Data Architect

Sherpa 6•Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD

3d•$140,000 - $155,000•Remote

About The Position

We are seeking a highly experienced Streaming Data Architect to design and build real time streaming infrastructure for IoT environments using NATS. The ideal candidate has deep experience with modern streaming architectures and hands-on expertise with high volume messaging tools such as Kafka, NATS, or similar distributed systems.

Requirements

8–10 years of experience in data engineering, distributed systems, or related fields with significant focus on real-time or streaming architectures.
Hands-on experience with enterprise-scale streaming/messaging technologies (Kafka, NATS, Pulsar, or equivalent).
Proven experience designing, building, and operating distributed streaming platforms for IoT or telemetry-driven workloads.
Strong background in defining message schemas, subject hierarchies/taxonomies, and structured approaches to event data organization.
Deep understanding of streaming data patterns, event-driven architecture, and high-volume messaging systems.
Solid grounding in cloud-native architectures (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
Active Secret clearance required (interim OK)
US Citizenship required

Nice To Haves

Direct experience building production systems with NATS (JetStream, NATS Server, client libraries, subject design).
Experience with IoT sensor data, telemetry systems, or device communication protocols.
Experience with UDP-based communications (e.g., QUIC), especially in latency-sensitive environments.
Experience in tactical or DDIL (Denied, Disrupted, Intermittent, Limited) operational environments.
Proficiency with Go for back-end or streaming service development.
Familiarity with edge computing patterns and bridging device-to-cloud data flows.
Strong communication and collaboration skills.
Ability to explain complex distributed system concepts clearly and guide teams on architectural best practices.
A focus on performance, reliability, and continuous improvement.

Responsibilities

Architect, design, and implement high performance streaming data platforms using NATS for IoT sensor data ingestion, processing, and distribution.
Define and maintain message schemas, subject taxonomies, and overall data governance patterns for real-time event-driven systems.
Develop scalable distributed streaming pipelines capable of handling high-throughput, low-latency, and bursty sensor data.
Collaborate closely with engineering teams to define data models, communication protocols, and ingestion strategies across diverse IoT devices.
Evaluate, select, and implement best-in-class frameworks, tooling, and architectural patterns for streaming analytics and durable messaging.
Optimize streaming architecture for reliability, fault-tolerance, and operations in heterogeneous or constrained environments.
Integrate streaming components seamlessly with cloud systems, microservices, and downstream analytics or storage platforms.