Senior Software Engineer - Real-Time Data (Kafka/Spark) Chester | Hybrid working | 12-month contract | Inside IR35 | Global Investment Bank A leading global investment bank is looking for a hands-on Senior Engineer to build high-performance, real-time data platforms supporting regulatory compliance across global operations. This is a fully engineering-led role focused on streaming, distributed systems, and low-latency processing, ideal for someone who enjoys solving complex data challenges at scale. What You'll Do Design and build Kafka-based streaming pipelines and Spark processing jobs Develop low-latency, high throughput systems handling large-scale datasets Create data matching and reconciliation solutions across multiple sources Work on event-driven architectures with a focus on performance, accuracy, and reliability Contribute to production grade systems in a highly regulated environment What We're Looking For Strong hands-on experience with Kafka and Spark Experience building real-time or near real-time data pipelines Solid understanding of distributed systems, scalability, and data processing Background in software engineering best practices (testing, CI/CD, clean code) Nice to Have Experience in banking, compliance, or regulated environments Exposure to high-volume transactional or voice data systems...