Systems, methods, and computer program products to perform an operation comprising providing a plurality of processing elements comprising one or more operators, the operators configured to process streaming data tuples, establishing an operator graph of a plurality of operators, the operator graph defining at least one execution path in which a first operator of the plurality of operators is configured to: (i) receive data tuples from at least one upstream operator and (ii) transmit data tuples to at least one downstream operator, wherein the first operator executes on a first compute node of a plurality of compute nodes, monitoring a memory use by the first operator on the first compute node, and upon determining that the memory use of the first operator exceeds a memory threshold, moving the first operator to a second compute node, of the plurality of compute nodes.