IBM

Introduction

At IBM Software, we transform client challenges into solutions. Building the world’s leading AI-powered, cloud-native products that shape the future of business and society. Our legacy of innovation creates endless opportunities for IBMers to learn, grow, and make an impact on a global scale. Working in Software means joining a team fueled by curiosity and collaboration. You’ll work with diverse technologies, partners, and industries to design, develop, and deliver solutions that power digital transformation. With a culture that values innovation, growth, and continuous learning, IBM Software places you at the heart of IBM’s product and technology landscape. Here, you’ll have the tools and opportunities to advance your career while creating software that changes the world. With Confluent, data doesn’t sit still. We put information in motion, streaming in near real time so organizations can react faster, build smarter, and deliver experiences as dynamic as the world around them.

Your role and responsibilities

About the Role

The next big goal for Confluent is to make it as easy as possible for anyone to use Confluent's products, including Kafka, to build their next killer streaming application. We are at the beginning of this journey and are looking for great engineers to come join our world-class team that is passionate about building and running large-scale, multi-tenant distributed systems for customers that expect a very high level of availability.

Backend engineers at Confluent work on a set of diverse and complex challenges such as building foundational cloud frameworks and services that power all components of the platform in the Cloud. We are building a new multi-tenant, multi-cloud, polyglot, cloud native compute substrate to enable new business opportunities across Confluent Cloud (including Connect, Apache Flink, Kafka and more). As a senior software engineer, you think strategically and you help drive end-to-end technical delivery from customer experience to scaling internal operations. You are not confined to the status quo and you leverage your expertise in Cloud-native, large-scale distributed systems to help take our platform to the next level. You worry about key operational aspects (availability, reliability, performance, monitoring, emergency response, capacity planning, disaster recovery) of our new Compute Platform, and you make sure that we have a highly-available, resilient and secure offering that our largest customers can rely on. If you love the hum of big data systems, thinking about how to make them run as smoothly as possible, and want to have a big influence on the architecture plus operational design points of this new product, then you will fit right in.

What You Will Do

• Own and lead the design and implementation of complex backend services and systems in a cloud-native, microservices-based environment.
• Make architecture and technical decisions that balance reliability, scalability, performance, and operability, and clearly communicate the tradeoffs.
• Drive projects end to end: from requirements and design through implementation, rollout, and ongoing operation in production.
• Improve service reliability and operations by defining SLOs/SLAs, strengthening observability, and participating in on-call as needed.
• Collaborate across teams to define APIs, integration points, and data models that keep the platform coherent and evolvable.
• Identify and drive platform and productivity improvements (tooling, automation, process) that raise the bar for the broader engineering organization.
• Mentor and support other engineers through code reviews, design reviews, and technical guidance, helping grow the team’s capabilities.
• Contribute to a culture of continuous improvement, inclusive collaboration, and high technical standards.

This job can be performed from anywhere in the US.

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

Master's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• 5+ years industry experience designing, building, and supporting backend systems in production with a solid grasp on good software engineering practices such as code reviews, deep focus on quality, and documentation.
• Strong knowledge of Python runtime environments (virtual environments, package management, and interpreter configurations).
• Strong programming and algorithmic skills. Proficiency in a major programming language, e.g. Python, Go, C / C++, Java, etc.
• Strong experience running services in a public cloud (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including containers and orchestration (for example, Docker, Kubernetes) and modern cloud native technologies.
• Expertise in other Language Runtimes / VMs (JVM/WASM, etc.) a big plus.
• A track record of technical leadership: driving projects, influencing architecture, and coordinating work across multiple engineers or teams.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to align stakeholders, explain complex ideas clearly, and drive decisions.
• Experience with observability and operational excellence (metrics, logging, tracing, incident response, and postmortems).
• Education in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience.

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Proven track record of leading the delivery of large-scale, highly available, low latency, high quality systems.
• Deep hands-on technical expertise in large scale systems engineering, distributed systems, and any of the container sandboxing technologies.
• On-call experience handling critical systems.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Software infuses core business operations with intelligence—from machine learning to generative AI—to help make organizations more responsive, productive, and resilient. IBM Software helps clients put AI into action now to create real value with trust, speed, and confidence across digital labor, IT automation, application modernization, security, and sustainability. Critical to this is the ability to make use of all data, because AI is only as good as the data that fuels it. In most organizations data is spread across multiple clouds, on premises, in private datacenters, and at the edge. IBM’s AI and data platform scales and accelerates the impact of AI with trusted data, and provides leading capabilities to train, tune and deploy AI across business. IBM’s hybrid cloud platform is one of the most comprehensive and consistent approach to development, security, and operations across hybrid environments—a flexible foundation for leveraging data, wherever it resides, to extend AI deep into a business.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

• Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being
• Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs
• Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law
• Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals
• Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.

IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.