IBM

You would build and operate multi-cloud deployment control planes, fleet lifecycle orchestration, platform APIs, and reliability and security capabilities. | The role requires 6+ years of software experience, deep Kubernetes controller and multi-cluster expertise, production Go services, and cloud infrastructure and reliability experience. | 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. Your Role And Responsibilities As a Senior Software Engineer II on the Fleet Management Unified Deployment team, you will play a key role in building and evolving the systems that manage the lifecycle of Confluent software across Confluent Cloud. Our platform orchestrates deployment, upgrades, recovery, and operational management across thousands of environments globally and across all major cloud providers, providing a unified control plane for safe, scalable, and consistent service operations. You'll Work On Critical Systems Including • Unified Deployment Control Plane: Build and evolve the control plane that manages software rollout, upgrades, recovery, and lifecycle operations across large multi-cloud fleets. • Fleet Lifecycle Orchestration: Develop systems that coordinate placement, maintenance, state transitions, and recovery workflows for services running across Confluent Cloud. • Platform APIs & Abstractions: Design and enhance APIs that provide clean abstractions for deployment workflows, service lifecycle management, and fleet-wide operational controls. • Cloud Platform Integration: Build and optimize integrations with the broader Confluent Cloud platform to enable seamless end-to-end operations across AWS, GCP, and Azure. • Multi-Tenancy & Security: Implement and strengthen isolation, security controls, and safe operational boundaries across deployment and runtime management systems. • Observability & Operations: Drive operational excellence through monitoring, automated health checks, remediation workflows, and self-healing capabilities. This job can be performed from anywhere in the US Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • 6+ years of experience delivering scalable software solutions. • Deep expertise in Kubernetes, including controller development, operator patterns, and multi-cluster architectures. • Strong proficiency in Go, with experience building production-grade backend or platform services. • Experience with fleet-wide lifecycle management, deployment orchestration, or cloud infrastructure automation. • Experience running production services in cloud environments, with strong knowledge of reliability, networking, and security fundamentals. • Proven ability to independently own significant technical projects and collaborate effectively across teams. Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • Experience with multi-tenant platform architectures and security isolation patterns. • Familiarity with gRPC, Protobuf, and API design for internal platform services. • Demonstrated track record of mentorship and technical leadership.

Lead the architecture and delivery of a secure, multi-tenant Kubernetes compute platform, including APIs, workload isolation, operations, and cross-team technical direction. | Requires 10+ years delivering distributed backend or infrastructure systems, with deep Kubernetes and Go expertise plus hands-on cloud, container security, and Linux experience. | 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 Team The Secure Compute team builds and operates the foundational infrastructure layer that powers Confluent Cloud. Our mission is to enable the safe execution of code and data processing in multi-tenant environments across AWS, Azure, and GCP at scale. We provide the essential building blocks, including isolation, identity, and networking, that empower both our customers and internal product teams to innovate without compromising security. As Confluent's product portfolio expands, our team sits at the center of the company's growth. We own a polyglot, container-based runtime that operates across thousands of clusters globally, solving some of the most complex challenges in distributed systems and cloud-native architecture. By balancing world-class security with operational cost-efficiency, we ensure that Confluent Cloud remains the trusted platform for mission-critical workloads in even the most highly regulated industries. About The Role As a Staff Software Engineer on the Secure Compute Platform team, you will be a key technical leader in building and evolving a next-generation, multi-tenant, cloud-native compute platform that safely runs both trusted and untrusted workloads at scale. Our platform is built on Kubernetes and runs across a large fleet of clusters in multiple public clouds, providing a unified abstraction layer for workload execution, lifecycle management, security, and operational excellence. You'll Work On Critical Systems Including • Secure Compute Infrastructure - Build and evolve the secure, multi-tenant compute substrate and isolation primitives that safely execute customer and internal workloads in a shared environment • Platform APIs & Abstractions - Design and evolve APIs that provide clear, safe abstractions for polyglot workloads (containers, functions, and services) with diverse performance and isolation needs • Core Platform Integration - Integrate the Secure Compute platform with core data and application services so that teams can onboard new workloads with minimal friction • Multi-Tenancy & Security - Implement and harden workload isolation, network policies, identity and access, and secure execution environments required to safely run customer-supplied code • Observability & Operations - Drive operational excellence through rich observability, automated health checks, self-healing workflows, and robust rollout and rollback practices As a senior technical leader, you think strategically and help drive end-to-end technical delivery, from platform APIs and developer experience down to runtime, capacity, and security. You leverage your expertise in cloud-native distributed systems to take the Secure Compute platform to the next level while ensuring high availability, reliability, security, and cost efficiency for mission-critical customer workloads. What You Will Do • Define and drive the technical direction for Secure Compute, including platform architecture, runtime, and security for running trusted and untrusted workloads at scale • Design and implement platform APIs and Kubernetes controllers/operators (primarily in Go) that power workload lifecycle, autoscaling, placement, and isolation for containers and serverless-style functions • Partner with product and platform teams to shape and deliver the roadmap for Secure Compute, enabling new customer-facing features and internal platforms to build on a common compute substrate • Deliver high-impact initiatives in areas such as workload scheduling, failure and disruption handling, private and public networking patterns, rollout strategies, and fleet-level resource management • Lead technical design reviews and influence architecture across teams, ensuring Secure Compute primitives are easy to adopt, safe by default, and aligned with broader platform strategy • Mentor and grow engineers on the team through design guidance, code reviews, pair programming, and sharing best practices for secure, reliable, operable platform development • Own operational excellence for key Secure Compute services, including availability, reliability, SLOs, performance, on-call response, incident management, and disaster recovery This job can be performed from anywhere in the United States. Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • 10+ years of experience delivering scalable backend or infrastructure software in production • Proven track record of leading the delivery of large-scale, highly available, low-latency distributed systems • Deep expertise in Kubernetes, including controller development, operator patterns, and preferably multi-region or multi-cluster architectures • Strong proficiency in Go with experience building production-grade services and control planes • Experience with multi-tenant platform architectures and security/isolation patterns (for example, namespaces, network policies, sandboxing, secrets management and identity management) • Hands-on experience with secure container runtimes and low-level Linux internals (for example, Kata containers, Cloud Hypervisor, cgroups, namespaces and seccomp) • Experience troubleshooting and optimizing performance for containerized and virtualized workloads • Familiarity with gRPC, Protobuf, and internal platform API design for service-to-service communication • Hands-on experience with observability and operational best practices (metrics, logging, distributed tracing, alerting, Service Level Objectives/SLOs, rollout strategies, incident response) • Experience with public cloud environments, including AWS, GCP, and Azure, as well as cloud-provider integrations • Demonstrated technical leadership and mentorship, including driving cross-team alignment on architecture, strategic direction, and execution Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • Strong collaboration skills and a demonstrated ability to work effectively with Product, SRE/Operations, Security, and Engineering teams • A smart, humble, and empathetic approach, coupled with a strong sense of ownership, accountability, and teamwork • Passion for building foundational cloud infrastructure and enthusiasm for working in a fast-paced, innovative environment

Lead architecture and delivery of Confluent Cloud control-plane infrastructure, driving reliability, cross-team initiatives, developer experience, and technical direction. | Requires 6+ years building complex backend or distributed systems, expertise in cloud-native infrastructure and operational reliability, proficiency in Go, Java, or Scala, and demonstrated cross-team technical leadership. | 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. Your Role And Responsibilities About the Role We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer I to lead the design and delivery of core control-plane infrastructure that powers Confluent Cloud. In this role, you will own highly technical projects across multiple services and teams, shaping the architecture and reliability of our cloud platform. You’ll combine deep distributed systems expertise with strong execution and cross-team leadership, identifying high-leverage problems and driving them from idea to durable impact. What You Will Do • Own end-to-end architecture and delivery of complex control-plane systems (APIs, controllers, orchestration workflows, and data models) that support Confluent Cloud products. • Lead open-ended technical initiatives by taking ambiguous problems, clarifying requirements, defining the approach, and driving execution across teams and services. • Raise the bar on reliability and operations by building resilient systems with strong observability, clear SLOs, runbooks, and safe rollout and rollback patterns. • Collaborate across organizations, including Cloud Platform, Kafka, Compute, Security, Traffic, SRE, and others, to align on designs, trade-offs, and long-term platform direction. • Mentor and unblock engineers at multiple levels, provide high-quality design and code reviews, and help grow the broader engineering team. • Continuously improve the developer experience for our control-plane stack through tooling, automation, CI/CD, and test strategy enhancements that reduce toil and increase velocity. • Influence technical strategy within your domain by identifying high-impact opportunities, proposing roadmaps, and helping prioritize work aligned with business goals. • Contribute to engineering culture through documentation, design reviews, and knowledge sharing, including internal talks, wikis, and external content where appropriate. Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • Experienced builder: Typically 6+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong track record of delivering complex backend or distributed systems to production. • Distributed systems & cloud expert: Deep hands-on experience with one or more of the following: • Distributed systems design (consistency models, failure modes, data modeling, and scalability). • Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and cloud-native architectures. • Kubernetes or similar orchestration platforms. • Strong systems and coding skills: Proficiency in one or more of Go, Java, or Scala, with the ability to work across services, infrastructure, and automation. • Architect and executor: Ability to define end-to-end designs, break work into milestones, de-risk early, and deliver high-quality solutions on schedule. • Operationally rigorous: Strong understanding of SLOs, failure modes, observability, and incident response, with a focus on designing for safe change and graceful degradation. • Great communicator: Ability to write clear design documents, articulate trade-offs effectively, and lead technical discussions with diverse stakeholders, including engineers, product managers, and leadership. • Leader without authority: Proven experience leading cross-team initiatives, influencing technical direction beyond immediate ownership, and helping other engineers grow and succeed. • Values-aligned: Committed to customer impact, reliability, long-term maintainability, and team success, with a focus on building durable solutions rather than simply shipping features. Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • Experience building control-plane systems, including APIs, operators/controllers, metadata services, and provisioning or orchestration workflows. • Background working with Apache Kafka or other streaming and data systems. • Experience designing and operating multi-region, high-availability, or disaster recovery architectures. • Experience working on security-sensitive infrastructure, including identity, certificates, secrets management, mTLS, policy enforcement, or compliance-driven environments. • Contributions to open-source projects, technical blogs, conference presentations, or other forms of technical thought leadership in relevant domains.

Lead architecture and delivery of Confluent Cloud control-plane infrastructure, improving reliability and developer experience while coordinating technical initiatives across teams. | Requires staff-level backend or distributed-systems experience, cloud-native infrastructure expertise, and proficiency in Go, Java, or Scala, alongside operational leadership and cross-team influence. | 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. Your Role And Responsibilities About the Role We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer I to lead the design and delivery of core control-plane infrastructure that powers Confluent Cloud. In this role, you will own highly technical projects across multiple services and teams, shaping the architecture and reliability of our cloud platform. You’ll combine deep distributed systems expertise with strong execution and cross-team leadership, identifying high-leverage problems and driving them from idea to durable impact. What You Will Do • Own end-to-end architecture and delivery of complex control-plane systems (APIs, controllers, orchestration workflows, and data models) that support Confluent Cloud products. • Lead open-ended technical initiatives by taking ambiguous problems, clarifying requirements, defining the approach, and driving execution across teams and services. • Raise the bar on reliability and operations by building resilient systems with strong observability, clear SLOs, runbooks, and safe rollout and rollback patterns. • Collaborate across organizations, including Cloud Platform, Kafka, Compute, Security, Traffic, SRE, and others, to align on designs, trade-offs, and long-term platform direction. • Mentor and unblock engineers at multiple levels, provide high-quality design and code reviews, and help grow the broader engineering team. • Continuously improve the developer experience for our control-plane stack through tooling, automation, CI/CD, and test strategy enhancements that reduce toil and increase velocity. • Influence technical strategy within your domain by identifying high-impact opportunities, proposing roadmaps, and helping prioritize work aligned with business goals. • Contribute to engineering culture through documentation, design reviews, and knowledge sharing, including internal talks, wikis, and external content where appropriate. Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • Experienced builder: Typically 6+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong track record of delivering complex backend or distributed systems to production. • Distributed systems & cloud expert: Deep hands-on experience with one or more of the following: • Distributed systems design (consistency models, failure modes, data modeling, and scalability). • Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and cloud-native architectures. • Kubernetes or similar orchestration platforms. • Strong systems and coding skills: Proficiency in one or more of Go, Java, or Scala, with the ability to work across services, infrastructure, and automation. • Architect and executor: Ability to define end-to-end designs, break work into milestones, de-risk early, and deliver high-quality solutions on schedule. • Operationally rigorous: Strong understanding of SLOs, failure modes, observability, and incident response, with a focus on designing for safe change and graceful degradation. • Great communicator: Ability to write clear design documents, articulate trade-offs effectively, and lead technical discussions with diverse stakeholders, including engineers, product managers, and leadership. • Leader without authority: Proven experience leading cross-team initiatives, influencing technical direction beyond immediate ownership, and helping other engineers grow and succeed. • Values-aligned: Committed to customer impact, reliability, long-term maintainability, and team success, with a focus on building durable solutions rather than simply shipping features. Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • Experience building control-plane systems, including APIs, operators/controllers, metadata services, and provisioning or orchestration workflows. • Background working with Apache Kafka or other streaming and data systems. • Experience designing and operating multi-region, high-availability, or disaster recovery architectures. • Experience working on security-sensitive infrastructure, including identity, certificates, secrets management, mTLS, policy enforcement, or compliance-driven environments. • Contributions to open-source projects, technical blogs, conference presentations, or other forms of technical thought leadership in relevant domains.

You would lead architecture and delivery of Confluent Cloud control-plane systems, improve reliability and operations, and guide technical initiatives across teams. | The role asks for 6+ years of engineering experience, deep distributed-systems and cloud expertise, proficiency in Go, Java, or Scala, and experience leading cross-team technical work. | 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. Your Role And Responsibilities About the Role We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer I to lead the design and delivery of core control-plane infrastructure that powers Confluent Cloud. In this role, you will own highly technical projects across multiple services and teams, shaping the architecture and reliability of our cloud platform. You’ll combine deep distributed systems expertise with strong execution and cross-team leadership, identifying high-leverage problems and driving them from idea to durable impact. What You Will Do • Own end-to-end architecture and delivery of complex control-plane systems (APIs, controllers, orchestration workflows, and data models) that support Confluent Cloud products. • Lead open-ended technical initiatives by taking ambiguous problems, clarifying requirements, defining the approach, and driving execution across teams and services. • Raise the bar on reliability and operations by building resilient systems with strong observability, clear SLOs, runbooks, and safe rollout and rollback patterns. • Collaborate across organizations, including Cloud Platform, Kafka, Compute, Security, Traffic, SRE, and others, to align on designs, trade-offs, and long-term platform direction. • Mentor and unblock engineers at multiple levels, provide high-quality design and code reviews, and help grow the broader engineering team. • Continuously improve the developer experience for our control-plane stack through tooling, automation, CI/CD, and test strategy enhancements that reduce toil and increase velocity. • Influence technical strategy within your domain by identifying high-impact opportunities, proposing roadmaps, and helping prioritize work aligned with business goals. • Contribute to engineering culture through documentation, design reviews, and knowledge sharing, including internal talks, wikis, and external content where appropriate. Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • Experienced builder: Typically 6+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong track record of delivering complex backend or distributed systems to production. • Distributed systems & cloud expert: Deep hands-on experience with one or more of the following: • Distributed systems design (consistency models, failure modes, data modeling, and scalability). • Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and cloud-native architectures. • Kubernetes or similar orchestration platforms. • Strong systems and coding skills: Proficiency in one or more of Go, Java, or Scala, with the ability to work across services, infrastructure, and automation. • Architect and executor: Ability to define end-to-end designs, break work into milestones, de-risk early, and deliver high-quality solutions on schedule. • Operationally rigorous: Strong understanding of SLOs, failure modes, observability, and incident response, with a focus on designing for safe change and graceful degradation. • Great communicator: Ability to write clear design documents, articulate trade-offs effectively, and lead technical discussions with diverse stakeholders, including engineers, product managers, and leadership. • Leader without authority: Proven experience leading cross-team initiatives, influencing technical direction beyond immediate ownership, and helping other engineers grow and succeed. • Values-aligned: Committed to customer impact, reliability, long-term maintainability, and team success, with a focus on building durable solutions rather than simply shipping features. Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • Experience building control-plane systems, including APIs, operators/controllers, metadata services, and provisioning or orchestration workflows. • Background working with Apache Kafka or other streaming and data systems. • Experience designing and operating multi-region, high-availability, or disaster recovery architectures. • Experience working on security-sensitive infrastructure, including identity, certificates, secrets management, mTLS, policy enforcement, or compliance-driven environments. • Contributions to open-source projects, technical blogs, conference presentations, or other forms of technical thought leadership in relevant domains.

Lead architecture and delivery of Confluent Cloud control-plane infrastructure, improving reliability and developer experience while coordinating technical initiatives across teams. | Requires staff-level leadership and production experience in distributed systems and cloud-native infrastructure, proficiency in Go, Java, or Scala, and strong operational, design, and cross-team communication skills. | 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. Your Role And Responsibilities About the Role We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer I to lead the design and delivery of core control-plane infrastructure that powers Confluent Cloud. In this role, you will own highly technical projects across multiple services and teams, shaping the architecture and reliability of our cloud platform. You’ll combine deep distributed systems expertise with strong execution and cross-team leadership, identifying high-leverage problems and driving them from idea to durable impact. What You Will Do • Own end-to-end architecture and delivery of complex control-plane systems (APIs, controllers, orchestration workflows, and data models) that support Confluent Cloud products. • Lead open-ended technical initiatives by taking ambiguous problems, clarifying requirements, defining the approach, and driving execution across teams and services. • Raise the bar on reliability and operations by building resilient systems with strong observability, clear SLOs, runbooks, and safe rollout and rollback patterns. • Collaborate across organizations, including Cloud Platform, Kafka, Compute, Security, Traffic, SRE, and others, to align on designs, trade-offs, and long-term platform direction. • Mentor and unblock engineers at multiple levels, provide high-quality design and code reviews, and help grow the broader engineering team. • Continuously improve the developer experience for our control-plane stack through tooling, automation, CI/CD, and test strategy enhancements that reduce toil and increase velocity. • Influence technical strategy within your domain by identifying high-impact opportunities, proposing roadmaps, and helping prioritize work aligned with business goals. • Contribute to engineering culture through documentation, design reviews, and knowledge sharing, including internal talks, wikis, and external content where appropriate. Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • Experienced builder: Typically 6+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong track record of delivering complex backend or distributed systems to production. • Distributed systems & cloud expert: Deep hands-on experience with one or more of the following: • Distributed systems design (consistency models, failure modes, data modeling, and scalability). • Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and cloud-native architectures. • Kubernetes or similar orchestration platforms. • Strong systems and coding skills: Proficiency in one or more of Go, Java, or Scala, with the ability to work across services, infrastructure, and automation. • Architect and executor: Ability to define end-to-end designs, break work into milestones, de-risk early, and deliver high-quality solutions on schedule. • Operationally rigorous: Strong understanding of SLOs, failure modes, observability, and incident response, with a focus on designing for safe change and graceful degradation. • Great communicator: Ability to write clear design documents, articulate trade-offs effectively, and lead technical discussions with diverse stakeholders, including engineers, product managers, and leadership. • Leader without authority: Proven experience leading cross-team initiatives, influencing technical direction beyond immediate ownership, and helping other engineers grow and succeed. • Values-aligned: Committed to customer impact, reliability, long-term maintainability, and team success, with a focus on building durable solutions rather than simply shipping features. Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • Experience building control-plane systems, including APIs, operators/controllers, metadata services, and provisioning or orchestration workflows. • Background working with Apache Kafka or other streaming and data systems. • Experience designing and operating multi-region, high-availability, or disaster recovery architectures. • Experience working on security-sensitive infrastructure, including identity, certificates, secrets management, mTLS, policy enforcement, or compliance-driven environments. • Contributions to open-source projects, technical blogs, conference presentations, or other forms of technical thought leadership in relevant domains.

Lead architecture and delivery of Confluent Cloud control-plane infrastructure, driving reliability, cross-team initiatives, and engineering practices. | Requires senior-level backend or distributed-systems experience, cloud-native infrastructure expertise, and proficiency in Go, Java, or Scala, alongside operational rigor and technical leadership. | 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. Your Role And Responsibilities About the Role We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer I to lead the design and delivery of core control-plane infrastructure that powers Confluent Cloud. In this role, you will own highly technical projects across multiple services and teams, shaping the architecture and reliability of our cloud platform. You’ll combine deep distributed systems expertise with strong execution and cross-team leadership, identifying high-leverage problems and driving them from idea to durable impact. What You Will Do • Own end-to-end architecture and delivery of complex control-plane systems (APIs, controllers, orchestration workflows, and data models) that support Confluent Cloud products. • Lead open-ended technical initiatives by taking ambiguous problems, clarifying requirements, defining the approach, and driving execution across teams and services. • Raise the bar on reliability and operations by building resilient systems with strong observability, clear SLOs, runbooks, and safe rollout and rollback patterns. • Collaborate across organizations, including Cloud Platform, Kafka, Compute, Security, Traffic, SRE, and others, to align on designs, trade-offs, and long-term platform direction. • Mentor and unblock engineers at multiple levels, provide high-quality design and code reviews, and help grow the broader engineering team. • Continuously improve the developer experience for our control-plane stack through tooling, automation, CI/CD, and test strategy enhancements that reduce toil and increase velocity. • Influence technical strategy within your domain by identifying high-impact opportunities, proposing roadmaps, and helping prioritize work aligned with business goals. • Contribute to engineering culture through documentation, design reviews, and knowledge sharing, including internal talks, wikis, and external content where appropriate. Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • Experienced builder: Typically 6+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong track record of delivering complex backend or distributed systems to production. • Distributed systems & cloud expert: Deep hands-on experience with one or more of the following: • Distributed systems design (consistency models, failure modes, data modeling, and scalability). • Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and cloud-native architectures. • Kubernetes or similar orchestration platforms. • Strong systems and coding skills: Proficiency in one or more of Go, Java, or Scala, with the ability to work across services, infrastructure, and automation. • Architect and executor: Ability to define end-to-end designs, break work into milestones, de-risk early, and deliver high-quality solutions on schedule. • Operationally rigorous: Strong understanding of SLOs, failure modes, observability, and incident response, with a focus on designing for safe change and graceful degradation. • Great communicator: Ability to write clear design documents, articulate trade-offs effectively, and lead technical discussions with diverse stakeholders, including engineers, product managers, and leadership. • Leader without authority: Proven experience leading cross-team initiatives, influencing technical direction beyond immediate ownership, and helping other engineers grow and succeed. • Values-aligned: Committed to customer impact, reliability, long-term maintainability, and team success, with a focus on building durable solutions rather than simply shipping features. Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • Experience building control-plane systems, including APIs, operators/controllers, metadata services, and provisioning or orchestration workflows. • Background working with Apache Kafka or other streaming and data systems. • Experience designing and operating multi-region, high-availability, or disaster recovery architectures. • Experience working on security-sensitive infrastructure, including identity, certificates, secrets management, mTLS, policy enforcement, or compliance-driven environments. • Contributions to open-source projects, technical blogs, conference presentations, or other forms of technical thought leadership in relevant domains.

Design, build, and operate scalable backend services and manage distributed systems with end-to-end ownership. | 2-5 years backend distributed systems experience, cloud infrastructure knowledge, proficiency in Go/Java/C++, and strong system-level understanding. | 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 To realize Confluent’s enormous potential, we are looking for software engineers, at various levels, to grow our Traffic team which is responsible for building and managing the networking fabric of Confluent Cloud. Cloud networking is a strategic investment area for Confluent with the potential to impact the company’s top and bottom line. The control plane area in the Traffic team builds and operates Confluent Cloud’s networking foundation, providing APIs and workflows to create and manage networking resources while improving platform velocity, resiliency, and efficiency
We are looking for someone with an interest in building large-scale distributed systems, with a focus on building and managing core platform services that power Confluent Cloud Networking
 What You Will Do • Design, build, and operate backend services that are secure, reliable, and scalable in a cloud-native environment. • Own features and projects end to end: requirements, design, implementation, testing, rollout, and ongoing improvements. • Work with distributed systems and microservices, with a focus on performance, resiliency, and clear API contracts. • Contribute to service reliability and operations, including monitoring, alerting, and on-call participation where applicable. • Collaborate with partner teams on architecture, data modeling, and integration points across Confluent’s platform. • Write clean, well-tested, and well-documented code, and participate in code reviews that raise the bar for the team. • Help improve engineering practices, tools, and automation to make it easier and safer to ship code. • Contribute to a healthy team culture through clear communication, inclusive collaboration, and a willingness to learn and teach. Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • 2-5 years of experience building distributed, highly available backend systems in production; experience with cloud infrastructure is a strong plus. • Hands-on experience designing and operating large-scale services with clear API contracts and end-to-end lifecycle ownership. • Solid systems-level understanding of networking, OS, and storage tradeoffs relevant to backend infrastructure. • Proficiency in at least one programming language, such as Go, Java, or C++, with the ability to work effectively in others as needed • Experience with public cloud and Kubernetes/containerized environments. • A self-starter with the ability to work effectively in teams • BS, MS in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • A networking background combined with your software engineering experience

Build and operate Confluent Cloud networking control-plane services, owning backend features end to end while improving scalability, resiliency, API contracts, and operational practices. | Requires production experience building highly available distributed backend systems, cloud and Kubernetes experience, proficiency in Go, Java, or C++, and systems-level understanding of networking, operating systems, and storage. | 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 To realize Confluent’s enormous potential, we are looking for software engineers, at various levels, to grow our Traffic team which is responsible for building and managing the networking fabric of Confluent Cloud. Cloud networking is a strategic investment area for Confluent with the potential to impact the company’s top and bottom line. The control plane area in the Traffic team builds and operates Confluent Cloud’s networking foundation, providing APIs and workflows to create and manage networking resources while improving platform velocity, resiliency, and efficiency
We are looking for someone with an interest in building large-scale distributed systems, with a focus on building and managing core platform services that power Confluent Cloud Networking
 What You Will Do • Design, build, and operate backend services that are secure, reliable, and scalable in a cloud-native environment. • Own features and projects end to end: requirements, design, implementation, testing, rollout, and ongoing improvements. • Work with distributed systems and microservices, with a focus on performance, resiliency, and clear API contracts. • Contribute to service reliability and operations, including monitoring, alerting, and on-call participation where applicable. • Collaborate with partner teams on architecture, data modeling, and integration points across Confluent’s platform. • Write clean, well-tested, and well-documented code, and participate in code reviews that raise the bar for the team. • Help improve engineering practices, tools, and automation to make it easier and safer to ship code. • Contribute to a healthy team culture through clear communication, inclusive collaboration, and a willingness to learn and teach. Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • 2-5 years of experience building distributed, highly available backend systems in production; experience with cloud infrastructure is a strong plus. • Hands-on experience designing and operating large-scale services with clear API contracts and end-to-end lifecycle ownership. • Solid systems-level understanding of networking, OS, and storage tradeoffs relevant to backend infrastructure. • Proficiency in at least one programming language, such as Go, Java, or C++, with the ability to work effectively in others as needed • Experience with public cloud and Kubernetes/containerized environments. • A self-starter with the ability to work effectively in teams • BS, MS in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • A networking background combined with your software engineering experience

Build and operate scalable, reliable backend services for Confluent Cloud networking, owning work end to end and collaborating across teams on APIs, architecture, and operations. | Requires production experience with highly available distributed backend services, API lifecycle ownership, systems-level networking and storage knowledge, Go, Java, or C++, and public cloud and Kubernetes experience. | 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 To realize Confluent’s enormous potential, we are looking for software engineers, at various levels, to grow our Traffic team which is responsible for building and managing the networking fabric of Confluent Cloud. Cloud networking is a strategic investment area for Confluent with the potential to impact the company’s top and bottom line. The control plane area in the Traffic team builds and operates Confluent Cloud’s networking foundation, providing APIs and workflows to create and manage networking resources while improving platform velocity, resiliency, and efficiency
We are looking for someone with an interest in building large-scale distributed systems, with a focus on building and managing core platform services that power Confluent Cloud Networking
 What You Will Do • Design, build, and operate backend services that are secure, reliable, and scalable in a cloud-native environment. • Own features and projects end to end: requirements, design, implementation, testing, rollout, and ongoing improvements. • Work with distributed systems and microservices, with a focus on performance, resiliency, and clear API contracts. • Contribute to service reliability and operations, including monitoring, alerting, and on-call participation where applicable. • Collaborate with partner teams on architecture, data modeling, and integration points across Confluent’s platform. • Write clean, well-tested, and well-documented code, and participate in code reviews that raise the bar for the team. • Help improve engineering practices, tools, and automation to make it easier and safer to ship code. • Contribute to a healthy team culture through clear communication, inclusive collaboration, and a willingness to learn and teach. Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • 2-5 years of experience building distributed, highly available backend systems in production; experience with cloud infrastructure is a strong plus. • Hands-on experience designing and operating large-scale services with clear API contracts and end-to-end lifecycle ownership. • Solid systems-level understanding of networking, OS, and storage tradeoffs relevant to backend infrastructure. • Proficiency in at least one programming language, such as Go, Java, or C++, with the ability to work effectively in others as needed • Experience with public cloud and Kubernetes/containerized environments. • A self-starter with the ability to work effectively in teams • BS, MS in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • A networking background combined with your software engineering experience

Design, build, and operate scalable backend services for cloud-native environments with end-to-end ownership. | 2-5 years backend distributed systems experience, cloud infrastructure knowledge, proficiency in Go/Java/C++, and strong systems-level understanding. | 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 To realize Confluent’s enormous potential, we are looking for software engineers, at various levels, to grow our Traffic team which is responsible for building and managing the networking fabric of Confluent Cloud. Cloud networking is a strategic investment area for Confluent with the potential to impact the company’s top and bottom line. The control plane area in the Traffic team builds and operates Confluent Cloud’s networking foundation, providing APIs and workflows to create and manage networking resources while improving platform velocity, resiliency, and efficiency
We are looking for someone with an interest in building large-scale distributed systems, with a focus on building and managing core platform services that power Confluent Cloud Networking
 What You Will Do • Design, build, and operate backend services that are secure, reliable, and scalable in a cloud-native environment. • Own features and projects end to end: requirements, design, implementation, testing, rollout, and ongoing improvements. • Work with distributed systems and microservices, with a focus on performance, resiliency, and clear API contracts. • Contribute to service reliability and operations, including monitoring, alerting, and on-call participation where applicable. • Collaborate with partner teams on architecture, data modeling, and integration points across Confluent’s platform. • Write clean, well-tested, and well-documented code, and participate in code reviews that raise the bar for the team. • Help improve engineering practices, tools, and automation to make it easier and safer to ship code. • Contribute to a healthy team culture through clear communication, inclusive collaboration, and a willingness to learn and teach. Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • 2-5 years of experience building distributed, highly available backend systems in production; experience with cloud infrastructure is a strong plus. • Hands-on experience designing and operating large-scale services with clear API contracts and end-to-end lifecycle ownership. • Solid systems-level understanding of networking, OS, and storage tradeoffs relevant to backend infrastructure. • Proficiency in at least one programming language, such as Go, Java, or C++, with the ability to work effectively in others as needed • Experience with public cloud and Kubernetes/containerized environments. • A self-starter with the ability to work effectively in teams • BS, MS in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • A networking background combined with your software engineering experience

Build and operate secure, scalable backend services for Confluent Cloud networking, owning projects from design through rollout while contributing to reliability, architecture, and engineering practices. | Requires 2–5 years building highly available backend systems, API lifecycle ownership, systems-level networking and storage knowledge, proficiency in Go, Java, or C++, and experience with public cloud and Kubernetes or containers. | 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 To realize Confluent’s enormous potential, we are looking for software engineers, at various levels, to grow our Traffic team which is responsible for building and managing the networking fabric of Confluent Cloud. Cloud networking is a strategic investment area for Confluent with the potential to impact the company’s top and bottom line. The control plane area in the Traffic team builds and operates Confluent Cloud’s networking foundation, providing APIs and workflows to create and manage networking resources while improving platform velocity, resiliency, and efficiency
We are looking for someone with an interest in building large-scale distributed systems, with a focus on building and managing core platform services that power Confluent Cloud Networking
 What You Will Do • Design, build, and operate backend services that are secure, reliable, and scalable in a cloud-native environment. • Own features and projects end to end: requirements, design, implementation, testing, rollout, and ongoing improvements. • Work with distributed systems and microservices, with a focus on performance, resiliency, and clear API contracts. • Contribute to service reliability and operations, including monitoring, alerting, and on-call participation where applicable. • Collaborate with partner teams on architecture, data modeling, and integration points across Confluent’s platform. • Write clean, well-tested, and well-documented code, and participate in code reviews that raise the bar for the team. • Help improve engineering practices, tools, and automation to make it easier and safer to ship code. • Contribute to a healthy team culture through clear communication, inclusive collaboration, and a willingness to learn and teach. Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • 2-5 years of experience building distributed, highly available backend systems in production; experience with cloud infrastructure is a strong plus. • Hands-on experience designing and operating large-scale services with clear API contracts and end-to-end lifecycle ownership. • Solid systems-level understanding of networking, OS, and storage tradeoffs relevant to backend infrastructure. • Proficiency in at least one programming language, such as Go, Java, or C++, with the ability to work effectively in others as needed • Experience with public cloud and Kubernetes/containerized environments. • A self-starter with the ability to work effectively in teams • BS, MS in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • A networking background combined with your software engineering experience

Design, build, and operate scalable backend services in a cloud-native environment with end-to-end ownership. | 2-5 years experience building distributed backend systems, proficiency in Go/Java/C++, and cloud infrastructure experience. | 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 To realize Confluent’s enormous potential, we are looking for software engineers, at various levels, to grow our Traffic team which is responsible for building and managing the networking fabric of Confluent Cloud. Cloud networking is a strategic investment area for Confluent with the potential to impact the company’s top and bottom line. The control plane area in the Traffic team builds and operates Confluent Cloud’s networking foundation, providing APIs and workflows to create and manage networking resources while improving platform velocity, resiliency, and efficiency
We are looking for someone with an interest in building large-scale distributed systems, with a focus on building and managing core platform services that power Confluent Cloud Networking
 What You Will Do • Design, build, and operate backend services that are secure, reliable, and scalable in a cloud-native environment. • Own features and projects end to end: requirements, design, implementation, testing, rollout, and ongoing improvements. • Work with distributed systems and microservices, with a focus on performance, resiliency, and clear API contracts. • Contribute to service reliability and operations, including monitoring, alerting, and on-call participation where applicable. • Collaborate with partner teams on architecture, data modeling, and integration points across Confluent’s platform. • Write clean, well-tested, and well-documented code, and participate in code reviews that raise the bar for the team. • Help improve engineering practices, tools, and automation to make it easier and safer to ship code. • Contribute to a healthy team culture through clear communication, inclusive collaboration, and a willingness to learn and teach. Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • 2-5 years of experience building distributed, highly available backend systems in production; experience with cloud infrastructure is a strong plus. • Hands-on experience designing and operating large-scale services with clear API contracts and end-to-end lifecycle ownership. • Solid systems-level understanding of networking, OS, and storage tradeoffs relevant to backend infrastructure. • Proficiency in at least one programming language, such as Go, Java, or C++, with the ability to work effectively in others as needed • Experience with public cloud and Kubernetes/containerized environments. • A self-starter with the ability to work effectively in teams • BS, MS in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • A networking background combined with your software engineering experience

Build and operate Confluent Cloud networking backend services, owning features end to end while improving scalability, resiliency, APIs, and operational practices. | Requires production experience with large-scale distributed backend systems, API contracts, cloud infrastructure, networking and systems fundamentals, and public cloud or Kubernetes; equivalent work experience is accepted in place of a computer science degree. | 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 To realize Confluent’s enormous potential, we are looking for software engineers, at various levels, to grow our Traffic team which is responsible for building and managing the networking fabric of Confluent Cloud. Cloud networking is a strategic investment area for Confluent with the potential to impact the company’s top and bottom line. The control plane area in the Traffic team builds and operates Confluent Cloud’s networking foundation, providing APIs and workflows to create and manage networking resources while improving platform velocity, resiliency, and efficiency
We are looking for someone with an interest in building large-scale distributed systems, with a focus on building and managing core platform services that power Confluent Cloud Networking
 What You Will Do • Design, build, and operate backend services that are secure, reliable, and scalable in a cloud-native environment. • Own features and projects end to end: requirements, design, implementation, testing, rollout, and ongoing improvements. • Work with distributed systems and microservices, with a focus on performance, resiliency, and clear API contracts. • Contribute to service reliability and operations, including monitoring, alerting, and on-call participation where applicable. • Collaborate with partner teams on architecture, data modeling, and integration points across Confluent’s platform. • Write clean, well-tested, and well-documented code, and participate in code reviews that raise the bar for the team. • Help improve engineering practices, tools, and automation to make it easier and safer to ship code. • Contribute to a healthy team culture through clear communication, inclusive collaboration, and a willingness to learn and teach. Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • 2-5 years of experience building distributed, highly available backend systems in production; experience with cloud infrastructure is a strong plus. • Hands-on experience designing and operating large-scale services with clear API contracts and end-to-end lifecycle ownership. • Solid systems-level understanding of networking, OS, and storage tradeoffs relevant to backend infrastructure. • Proficiency in at least one programming language, such as Go, Java, or C++, with the ability to work effectively in others as needed • Experience with public cloud and Kubernetes/containerized environments. • A self-starter with the ability to work effectively in teams • BS, MS in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • A networking background combined with your software engineering experience

Build and operate reliable, scalable backend services for Confluent Cloud networking, owning projects end to end and contributing to service operations and platform improvements. | The role calls for production experience with distributed backend systems, cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes, networking and systems fundamentals, and proficiency in a language such as Go, Java, or C++. | 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 To realize Confluent’s enormous potential, we are looking for software engineers, at various levels, to grow our Traffic team which is responsible for building and managing the networking fabric of Confluent Cloud. Cloud networking is a strategic investment area for Confluent with the potential to impact the company’s top and bottom line. The control plane area in the Traffic team builds and operates Confluent Cloud’s networking foundation, providing APIs and workflows to create and manage networking resources while improving platform velocity, resiliency, and efficiency
We are looking for someone with an interest in building large-scale distributed systems, with a focus on building and managing core platform services that power Confluent Cloud Networking
 What You Will Do • Design, build, and operate backend services that are secure, reliable, and scalable in a cloud-native environment. • Own features and projects end to end: requirements, design, implementation, testing, rollout, and ongoing improvements. • Work with distributed systems and microservices, with a focus on performance, resiliency, and clear API contracts. • Contribute to service reliability and operations, including monitoring, alerting, and on-call participation where applicable. • Collaborate with partner teams on architecture, data modeling, and integration points across Confluent’s platform. • Write clean, well-tested, and well-documented code, and participate in code reviews that raise the bar for the team. • Help improve engineering practices, tools, and automation to make it easier and safer to ship code. • Contribute to a healthy team culture through clear communication, inclusive collaboration, and a willingness to learn and teach. Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • 2-5 years of experience building distributed, highly available backend systems in production; experience with cloud infrastructure is a strong plus. • Hands-on experience designing and operating large-scale services with clear API contracts and end-to-end lifecycle ownership. • Solid systems-level understanding of networking, OS, and storage tradeoffs relevant to backend infrastructure. • Proficiency in at least one programming language, such as Go, Java, or C++, with the ability to work effectively in others as needed • Experience with public cloud and Kubernetes/containerized environments. • A self-starter with the ability to work effectively in teams • BS, MS in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • A networking background combined with your software engineering experience

Design, build, and maintain cloud-native infrastructure services and ensure platform reliability and scalability. | Strong programming in Go/Java/Python, deep systems internals knowledge, Kubernetes and cloud experience, automation and observability expertise. | 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. Your Role And Responsibilities With Confluent, organizations can harness the full power of continuously flowing data to innovate and win in the modern digital world. We have a purpose that drives us to do better every day - we're creating an entirely new category within data infrastructure - data streaming. This technology will allow every organization to create experiences and use the power of data in ways that profoundly impact the way we all live. This impact is our purpose and drives us to do better every day. One Confluent. One team. One Data Streaming Platform. Data Connects Us. The Confluent Cloud Platform based on Apache Kafka is the leading Cloud Native Platform as a Service for streaming data infrastructure, but this is just the beginning. We are building a PaaS, enabling customers around the globe to deliver streaming applications. What You Will Do • Design, build, and evolve internal infrastructure services written in Go, often as Kubernetes operators, that power the core platform behind Confluent Cloud • Own the systems that make cloud infrastructure secure, scalable, observable, and reliable, using GitOps, Terraform, Prometheus, Grafana, and a strong foundation in Linux, networking, and public cloud • Collaborate with engineers across Confluent to enable fast, safe, and autonomous deployment of services through shared platform tooling and best practices • Take shared responsibility for the full lifecycle of our infrastructure: availability, performance, monitoring, incident response, and capacity planning • Work on systems at scale, across tens of thousands of instances and multiple regions, with a focus on smooth, fast, and safe operations • Influence the architecture and operational strategy behind the critical infrastructure that supports all of Confluent’s cloud services Participate in a 8-hour, follow-the-sun on-call rotation. Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • Strong programming skills with the ability to read, debug, and evolve existing code (Go, Java, or Python) Deep understanding of systems internals (filesystems, memory, networking, kernel behavior) and large-scale system performance • Hands-on experience with Kubernetes in production and modern cloud-native ecosystems, including containers and public cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) • Expertise in automation and reliability practices—GitOps, Terraform, CI/CD, observability—and experience diagnosing and improving complex systems • Strong collaboration, communication, and ownership mindset, with the ability to operate independently in a distributed team Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • Strong programming skills with the ability to read, debug, and evolve existing code (Go, Java, or Python) Deep understanding of systems internals (filesystems, memory, networking, kernel behavior) and large-scale system performance • Hands-on experience with Kubernetes in production and modern cloud-native ecosystems, including containers and public cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) • Expertise in automation and reliability practices—GitOps, Terraform, CI/CD, observability—and experience diagnosing and improving complex systems

Design and develop cloud-native compute platform features including multi-cluster orchestration and platform APIs. | Requires 5+ years in scalable software, Kubernetes expertise, Go programming, and experience with multi-tenant platform architectures. | 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. About Confluent Your role and responsibilities Confluent is pioneering a fundamentally new category of data infrastructure focused on data in motion. Have you ever found a new favorite series on Netflix, picked up groceries curbside at Walmart, or paid for something using Square? That's the power of data in motion in action—giving organizations instant access to the massive amounts of data that is constantly flowing throughout their business.At Confluent, we're building the foundational platform for this new paradigm of data infrastructure. Our cloud-native offering is designed to be the intelligent connective tissue enabling real-time data, from multiple sources, to constantly stream across the organization. With Confluent, organizations can create a central nervous system to innovate and win in a digital-first world.We're looking for self-motivated team members who crave a challenge and feel energized to roll up their sleeves and help realize Confluent's enormous potential. Chart your own path and take healthy risks as we solve big problems together. We value having diverse teams and want you to grow as we grow—whether you're just starting out in your career or managing a large team, you'll be amazed at the magnitude of your impact. About The Role As a Software Engineer on the Compute Platform team, you will be a key technical leader in building and evolving our next-generation, multi-tenant, cloud-native compute substrate that powers all of Confluent Cloud's diverse workloads. Our platform orchestrates workloads across thousands of Kubernetes clusters globally across all cloud service providers, providing a unified abstraction layer for scheduling, lifecycle management, and operational excellence. You'll work on critical systems including: • Multi-Cluster Workload Orchestration: Build the control plane that manages workload placement, lifecycle, and state across multiple Kubernetes clusters per region • Platform APIs & Abstractions: Design and evolve APIs that provide clean abstractions for polyglot workload management across diverse compute needs • Cloud Platform Integration: Build and optimize deep integrations with the broader Confluent Cloud platform for seamless end-to-end operations • Multi-Tenancy & Security: Implement and enhance workload isolation, network policies, and secure execution environments • Observability & Operations: Drive operational excellence through monitoring integration, automated health checks, and self-healing capabilities As a senior technical leader, you think strategically and help drive end-to-end technical delivery from customer experience to scaling internal operations. You leverage your expertise in cloud-native distributed systems to take our platform to the next level while ensuring high availability, reliability, and security for our largest enterprise customers. What You Will Do • Own features end to end for the Compute Platform, such as multi-cluster orchestration, workload placement, and security architecture • Design and implement platform APIs and Kubernetes operators using Go to support evolving workload requirements • Deliver high-impact initiatives in areas such as workload scheduling, disruption management, network isolation, rolling update strategies, and cross-cluster resource management • Lead technical design reviews and drive architectural decisions across organizational boundaries • Mentor and grow other engineers on the team through code reviews, pairing, and technical guidance • Own operational aspects including availability, reliability, performance monitoring, emergency response, and disaster recovery for our global compute infrastructure Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • 5+ years of experience delivering scalable software solutions • Proven track record of leading the delivery of large-scale, highly available, low-latency systems • Deep expertise in Kubernetes including controller development, operator patterns, and multi-cluster architectures • Strong proficiency in Go with experience building production-grade distributed systems • Experience with multi-tenant platform architectures and security isolation patterns • Track record of working collaboratively across teams including product management, SRE, and other engineering teams Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • Experience with observability tools and operational excellence practices • Experience with multi-cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure) and cloud-provider integrations • Track record of providing technical leadership and mentorship • A smart, humble, and empathetic attitude with a strong sense of teamwork • Drive and excitement about the challenges of a fast-paced, innovative software environment • Familiarity with gRPC, Protobuf, and API design for internal platform services

Design and develop a multi-tenant, cloud-native compute platform with workload orchestration, security, and operational excellence. | 5+ years experience with scalable software, Kubernetes expertise, Go programming, multi-tenant architectures, and leadership skills. | 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. About Confluent Your role and responsibilities Confluent is pioneering a fundamentally new category of data infrastructure focused on data in motion. Have you ever found a new favorite series on Netflix, picked up groceries curbside at Walmart, or paid for something using Square? That's the power of data in motion in action—giving organizations instant access to the massive amounts of data that is constantly flowing throughout their business.At Confluent, we're building the foundational platform for this new paradigm of data infrastructure. Our cloud-native offering is designed to be the intelligent connective tissue enabling real-time data, from multiple sources, to constantly stream across the organization. With Confluent, organizations can create a central nervous system to innovate and win in a digital-first world.We're looking for self-motivated team members who crave a challenge and feel energized to roll up their sleeves and help realize Confluent's enormous potential. Chart your own path and take healthy risks as we solve big problems together. We value having diverse teams and want you to grow as we grow—whether you're just starting out in your career or managing a large team, you'll be amazed at the magnitude of your impact. About The Role As a Software Engineer on the Compute Platform team, you will be a key technical leader in building and evolving our next-generation, multi-tenant, cloud-native compute substrate that powers all of Confluent Cloud's diverse workloads. Our platform orchestrates workloads across thousands of Kubernetes clusters globally across all cloud service providers, providing a unified abstraction layer for scheduling, lifecycle management, and operational excellence. You'll work on critical systems including: • Multi-Cluster Workload Orchestration: Build the control plane that manages workload placement, lifecycle, and state across multiple Kubernetes clusters per region • Platform APIs & Abstractions: Design and evolve APIs that provide clean abstractions for polyglot workload management across diverse compute needs • Cloud Platform Integration: Build and optimize deep integrations with the broader Confluent Cloud platform for seamless end-to-end operations • Multi-Tenancy & Security: Implement and enhance workload isolation, network policies, and secure execution environments • Observability & Operations: Drive operational excellence through monitoring integration, automated health checks, and self-healing capabilities As a senior technical leader, you think strategically and help drive end-to-end technical delivery from customer experience to scaling internal operations. You leverage your expertise in cloud-native distributed systems to take our platform to the next level while ensuring high availability, reliability, and security for our largest enterprise customers. What You Will Do • Own features end to end for the Compute Platform, such as multi-cluster orchestration, workload placement, and security architecture • Design and implement platform APIs and Kubernetes operators using Go to support evolving workload requirements • Deliver high-impact initiatives in areas such as workload scheduling, disruption management, network isolation, rolling update strategies, and cross-cluster resource management • Lead technical design reviews and drive architectural decisions across organizational boundaries • Mentor and grow other engineers on the team through code reviews, pairing, and technical guidance • Own operational aspects including availability, reliability, performance monitoring, emergency response, and disaster recovery for our global compute infrastructure Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • 5+ years of experience delivering scalable software solutions • Proven track record of leading the delivery of large-scale, highly available, low-latency systems • Deep expertise in Kubernetes including controller development, operator patterns, and multi-cluster architectures • Strong proficiency in Go with experience building production-grade distributed systems • Experience with multi-tenant platform architectures and security isolation patterns • Track record of working collaboratively across teams including product management, SRE, and other engineering teams Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • Experience with observability tools and operational excellence practices • Experience with multi-cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure) and cloud-provider integrations • Track record of providing technical leadership and mentorship • A smart, humble, and empathetic attitude with a strong sense of teamwork • Drive and excitement about the challenges of a fast-paced, innovative software environment • Familiarity with gRPC, Protobuf, and API design for internal platform services

Design and develop scalable, multi-tenant cloud-native compute platform features with leadership and operational excellence. | 5+ years experience in scalable software, Kubernetes expertise, Go programming, multi-tenant platform security, and cross-team collaboration. | 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. About Confluent Your role and responsibilities Confluent is pioneering a fundamentally new category of data infrastructure focused on data in motion. Have you ever found a new favorite series on Netflix, picked up groceries curbside at Walmart, or paid for something using Square? That's the power of data in motion in action—giving organizations instant access to the massive amounts of data that is constantly flowing throughout their business.At Confluent, we're building the foundational platform for this new paradigm of data infrastructure. Our cloud-native offering is designed to be the intelligent connective tissue enabling real-time data, from multiple sources, to constantly stream across the organization. With Confluent, organizations can create a central nervous system to innovate and win in a digital-first world.We're looking for self-motivated team members who crave a challenge and feel energized to roll up their sleeves and help realize Confluent's enormous potential. Chart your own path and take healthy risks as we solve big problems together. We value having diverse teams and want you to grow as we grow—whether you're just starting out in your career or managing a large team, you'll be amazed at the magnitude of your impact. About The Role As a Software Engineer on the Compute Platform team, you will be a key technical leader in building and evolving our next-generation, multi-tenant, cloud-native compute substrate that powers all of Confluent Cloud's diverse workloads. Our platform orchestrates workloads across thousands of Kubernetes clusters globally across all cloud service providers, providing a unified abstraction layer for scheduling, lifecycle management, and operational excellence. You'll work on critical systems including: • Multi-Cluster Workload Orchestration: Build the control plane that manages workload placement, lifecycle, and state across multiple Kubernetes clusters per region • Platform APIs & Abstractions: Design and evolve APIs that provide clean abstractions for polyglot workload management across diverse compute needs • Cloud Platform Integration: Build and optimize deep integrations with the broader Confluent Cloud platform for seamless end-to-end operations • Multi-Tenancy & Security: Implement and enhance workload isolation, network policies, and secure execution environments • Observability & Operations: Drive operational excellence through monitoring integration, automated health checks, and self-healing capabilities As a senior technical leader, you think strategically and help drive end-to-end technical delivery from customer experience to scaling internal operations. You leverage your expertise in cloud-native distributed systems to take our platform to the next level while ensuring high availability, reliability, and security for our largest enterprise customers. What You Will Do • Own features end to end for the Compute Platform, such as multi-cluster orchestration, workload placement, and security architecture • Design and implement platform APIs and Kubernetes operators using Go to support evolving workload requirements • Deliver high-impact initiatives in areas such as workload scheduling, disruption management, network isolation, rolling update strategies, and cross-cluster resource management • Lead technical design reviews and drive architectural decisions across organizational boundaries • Mentor and grow other engineers on the team through code reviews, pairing, and technical guidance • Own operational aspects including availability, reliability, performance monitoring, emergency response, and disaster recovery for our global compute infrastructure Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • 5+ years of experience delivering scalable software solutions • Proven track record of leading the delivery of large-scale, highly available, low-latency systems • Deep expertise in Kubernetes including controller development, operator patterns, and multi-cluster architectures • Strong proficiency in Go with experience building production-grade distributed systems • Experience with multi-tenant platform architectures and security isolation patterns • Track record of working collaboratively across teams including product management, SRE, and other engineering teams Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • Experience with observability tools and operational excellence practices • Experience with multi-cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure) and cloud-provider integrations • Track record of providing technical leadership and mentorship • A smart, humble, and empathetic attitude with a strong sense of teamwork • Drive and excitement about the challenges of a fast-paced, innovative software environment • Familiarity with gRPC, Protobuf, and API design for internal platform services

Design and develop scalable cloud-native compute platform features including multi-cluster orchestration and platform APIs. | 5+ years experience in scalable software, expertise in Kubernetes and Go, leadership and collaboration skills. | 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. About Confluent Your role and responsibilities Confluent is pioneering a fundamentally new category of data infrastructure focused on data in motion. Have you ever found a new favorite series on Netflix, picked up groceries curbside at Walmart, or paid for something using Square? That's the power of data in motion in action—giving organizations instant access to the massive amounts of data that is constantly flowing throughout their business.At Confluent, we're building the foundational platform for this new paradigm of data infrastructure. Our cloud-native offering is designed to be the intelligent connective tissue enabling real-time data, from multiple sources, to constantly stream across the organization. With Confluent, organizations can create a central nervous system to innovate and win in a digital-first world.We're looking for self-motivated team members who crave a challenge and feel energized to roll up their sleeves and help realize Confluent's enormous potential. Chart your own path and take healthy risks as we solve big problems together. We value having diverse teams and want you to grow as we grow—whether you're just starting out in your career or managing a large team, you'll be amazed at the magnitude of your impact. About The Role As a Software Engineer on the Compute Platform team, you will be a key technical leader in building and evolving our next-generation, multi-tenant, cloud-native compute substrate that powers all of Confluent Cloud's diverse workloads. Our platform orchestrates workloads across thousands of Kubernetes clusters globally across all cloud service providers, providing a unified abstraction layer for scheduling, lifecycle management, and operational excellence. You'll work on critical systems including: • Multi-Cluster Workload Orchestration: Build the control plane that manages workload placement, lifecycle, and state across multiple Kubernetes clusters per region • Platform APIs & Abstractions: Design and evolve APIs that provide clean abstractions for polyglot workload management across diverse compute needs • Cloud Platform Integration: Build and optimize deep integrations with the broader Confluent Cloud platform for seamless end-to-end operations • Multi-Tenancy & Security: Implement and enhance workload isolation, network policies, and secure execution environments • Observability & Operations: Drive operational excellence through monitoring integration, automated health checks, and self-healing capabilities As a senior technical leader, you think strategically and help drive end-to-end technical delivery from customer experience to scaling internal operations. You leverage your expertise in cloud-native distributed systems to take our platform to the next level while ensuring high availability, reliability, and security for our largest enterprise customers. What You Will Do • Own features end to end for the Compute Platform, such as multi-cluster orchestration, workload placement, and security architecture • Design and implement platform APIs and Kubernetes operators using Go to support evolving workload requirements • Deliver high-impact initiatives in areas such as workload scheduling, disruption management, network isolation, rolling update strategies, and cross-cluster resource management • Lead technical design reviews and drive architectural decisions across organizational boundaries • Mentor and grow other engineers on the team through code reviews, pairing, and technical guidance • Own operational aspects including availability, reliability, performance monitoring, emergency response, and disaster recovery for our global compute infrastructure Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise • 5+ years of experience delivering scalable software solutions • Proven track record of leading the delivery of large-scale, highly available, low-latency systems • Deep expertise in Kubernetes including controller development, operator patterns, and multi-cluster architectures • Strong proficiency in Go with experience building production-grade distributed systems • Experience with multi-tenant platform architectures and security isolation patterns • Track record of working collaboratively across teams including product management, SRE, and other engineering teams Preferred Technical And Professional Experience • Experience with observability tools and operational excellence practices • Experience with multi-cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure) and cloud-provider integrations • Track record of providing technical leadership and mentorship • A smart, humble, and empathetic attitude with a strong sense of teamwork • Drive and excitement about the challenges of a fast-paced, innovative software environment • Familiarity with gRPC, Protobuf, and API design for internal platform services