Methods and systems are provided for unified job processing of interdependent heterogeneous tasks within a domain containing a plurality of nodes. Jobs containing components to be processed in the domain are submitted and are identified by type. A job control flow associated with the job type is identified and used to process the components of the job on various nodes within the domain. Multiple job control flows are handled simultaneously, and provisions are made for sharing common job components among jobs. The job control flow utilizes a finite state machine where a given instance of the finite state machine applies to a specific job type. The finite state machine can be expressed using extensible mark-up language schema.