Big fintech energy. Real-time data. Kafka doing its thing. AWS humming in the background. A business moving fast, thinking bigger, and leaning hard into data, automation and AI.
Big Wave Digital is looking for a Senior Streaming Data Engineer to join a Sydney CBD based fintech on an initial 3 month contract.
There is potential for the role to extend or even convert to permanent down the track, but no promises, no fake guarantees, and no recruiter fairy dust. For now, this is a sharp 3 month contract with meaningful work from day one.
The Role
You will be joining a business going through a serious data transformation. The environment is modern, cloud-based and moving towards faster, smarter, more real-time ways of using data across the organisation.
The focus is on building and improving real-time data flows, helping the business move away from slower batch-heavy reporting, and supporting better operational, customer and commercial insights.
You will be working across Kafka, Confluent Cloud and AWS, helping data move cleanly, reliably and quickly between systems.
Think less “dusty legacy reporting stack” and more “live data, streaming architecture, AI-ready foundations and dashboards that actually mean something before tomorrow morning.”
What You’ll Be Doing
You could be involved in:
- Designing, building and improving real-time data streaming pipelines
- Working with Kafka topics, producers and consumers
- Using Confluent Cloud to support managed Kafka environments
- Integrating streaming data with AWS services
- Supporting real-time reporting and operational dashboards
- Helping move data into platforms such as Snowflake, Redshift, S3 or Databricks
- Working with event-driven architecture patterns
- Supporting CDC and database event streaming
- Improving reliability, monitoring and observability across streaming pipelines
- Collaborating with data engineers, platform teams, architects and business stakeholders
- Helping create the data foundations for broader AI and automation initiatives
Tech You May Be Working With
You do not need to have every single thing on this list, but strong experience across the core streaming and AWS stack will matter.
- Apache Kafka
- Confluent Cloud
- AWS
- Amazon MSK
- Kafka Connect
- Schema Registry
- Python
- SQL
- Snowflake
- Redshift
- S3
- Databricks
- Spark Streaming
- Flink
- ksqlDB
- Airflow
- AWS Glue
- Lambda
- CDC tools
- Real-time reporting platforms
- Monitoring and observability tools
What We’re Looking For
We are looking for someone who has genuinely worked with streaming data, not just watched a Kafka webinar and added it to LinkedIn because it sounded spicy.
You will ideally bring:
- Strong Kafka experience
- Hands-on Confluent Cloud experience
- Solid AWS data engineering experience
- Experience building real-time or near real-time data pipelines
- Understanding of event-driven architecture
- Strong SQL and data modelling awareness
- Experience integrating streaming data into reporting or analytics platforms
- Good communication skills
- The ability to work with both technical teams and business stakeholders
- A practical, delivery-focused mindset
This would suit a senior data engineer, streaming data engineer, cloud data engineer, Kafka specialist or data platform consultant who enjoys short, high-impact contract work.
The Environment
This is a Sydney CBD fintech that is growing fast, changing quickly and investing heavily in its data capability.
The business is also going through major AI-driven change, so this is not just a “keep the lights on” contract. The work you do will help shape how real-time data supports smarter reporting, better decision-making and future AI use cases.
There will be moving parts. There will be ambiguity. There will probably be a few “can we get this yesterday?” moments. But there will also be proper impact, smart people and interesting technical problems to solve.
Contract Details
- Initial 3 month contract
- Sydney CBD based
- Fintech environment
- Potential to extend or convert to permanent, but no guarantees
- Day rate contract
- Immediate or short notice start preferred
Why This Role?
Because Kafka is cool, real-time reporting is useful, and fintech data platforms are where a lot of the interesting work is happening right now.
You will get to work on meaningful streaming data problems in a business that is actively investing in data, cloud and AI.
No beige corporate waffle. No pretending this is a “family” after one Teams call. Just a strong contract with good tech, a fast-moving environment and a chance to make a proper dent.
Interested?
If you are a Senior Streaming Data Engineer with strong Kafka, Confluent Cloud and AWS experience, and you can help a fintech business move faster with real-time data, we would love to hear from you.
Apply now or reach out directly to Big Wave Digital for a confidential chat.
