Your role and responsibilities
About the Role:Senior Software Engineers II at Confluent take ownership of critical backend systems that underpin our data streaming platform. You'll lead the design and delivery of large-scale, distributed services that must be secure, highly available, and easy to operate across regions and clouds.
This is a general L4 backend role used across multiple teams. Depending on your background, you may focus on areas like core platform services, governance and metadata, observability and telemetry, security and access, or customer-facing application services. We'll align you to a team during the process based on your experience, interests, and business needs.
You'll act as a technical leader: setting direction for projects, making architecture decisions, mentoring engineers, and partnering with cross-functional stakeholders to ship high-impact work.
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.
Required education
Bachelor's Degree
Preferred education
Master's Degree
Required technical and professional expertise
What You Will Bring:- 5+ years of industry experience building, scaling, and operating backend systems in production.
- Deep proficiency in at least one major backend programming language (for example, Java, Go, C/C++, or Python) and strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, and system design.
- Hands-on experience with distributed systems (such as event-driven architectures, high-throughput services, or large-scale data pipelines) and an understanding of consistency, fault tolerance, and performance tradeoffs.
- Strong experience running services in a public cloud (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including containers and orchestration (for example, Docker, Kubernetes) and modern deployment practices.
- Comfortable working with databases and storage systems (SQL and/or NoSQL), including data modeling and performance optimization for scale.
- 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).
- BS, MS, or PhD in computer science, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Preferred technical and professional experience
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Leading-Edge Technologies: Experience with designing, developing, and delivering software solutions using leading-edge technologies, including back-end and front-end development, and DevOps engineering.
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Agile Collaboration: Experience working in an Agile environment, collaborating with stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver high-quality software solutions.
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Automated CI/CD Pipelines: Experience contributing to automated CI/CD pipelines, ensuring seamless integration and delivery of software solutions.
OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILSIBM 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.
