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.
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.
