Building the Future of Open Finance
Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.
The opportunity
Own and evolve streaming data pipelines that power live inference and real-time model serving across Kraken's AI infrastructure
Design and build feature stores that serve low-latency, high-reliability features to production ML models
Implement and maintain streaming systems using RisingWave, Apache Flink, or Kafka Streams, selecting the right tool for the workload
Partner with ML engineers and AI infra teams to define data contracts, feature schemas, and pipeline SLAs
Drive pipelines toward real-time where batch exists today reducing latency from hours to seconds
Ensure data quality, observability, and auditability across all streaming and feature engineering systems
Contribute to inference pipeline tooling where data engineering and model serving intersect
Evaluate emerging streaming and feature store technologies and shape the team's technical roadmap
What You Bring
5+ years in data engineering with at least 2 years focused on streaming systems in production
Hands‑on experience with RisingWave, Apache Flink, Kafka Streams, or comparable stream processing frameworks
Strong understanding of feature store design — online/offline consistency, point‑in‑time correctness, low‑latency serving
Experience building data pipelines that feed production ML models or inference systems
Proficiency in Python and/or Scala; SQL fluency required
Familiarity with data quality frameworks, pipeline observability, and SLA ownership
Comfortable operating in a fast‑moving, ambiguous environment embedded within an AI‑focused team
Nice to haves
Direct experience with RisingWave in production
Exposure to inference pipeline architecture or model serving infrastructure
Experience with feature platforms
Crypto or fintech domain experience
We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.
As an equal opportunity employer, we don't tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.
