akka-cluster: actor not picking up a job

Question

I am using akka cluster for actor distribution, and struggling with an issue.

In my application, I have an actor, say 'engine' which processes a job. From configuration, I can set how many instances of engine to be created on a node in the cluster. Engine receives job from an external system where I can disable a job, thus making corresponding engine idle(running, but not doing anything, and ready to accept a new available job).

I start 2 nodes(node 1, node 2), ie total 4 engines are running, each processing a job.

Now I disable a job, which makes one of the engine on , say node 1, idle and thus ready to accept another job.

Now I stop node 2, thus entirely stopping engines running on it.

I expect that one of the job from node 2 is now picked from the idle engine on node 1.

But that doesnt happen.

But if I stop node 1 too and restart it, then I see both engines on it now executing jobs.

I am not really sure what can be the cause? Or where to start looking to debug the issue?