Senior Software Developer - Confluent DevProd

IBM; Calgary; On-site; CAD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Software seeks a Senior Software Engineer to design, build, and operate internal developer platform services that improve developer experience and engineering velocity. You’ll own multi-tenant cloud services, CI/CD integration, and scalable architectures.

You will explore AI-assisted workflows, model workloads, and drive end-to-end delivery with strong collaboration, documentation, and mentorship across teams.

Qualifications

• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• At least 5 years of professional software engineering experience building and operating cloud services, platforms, or large-scale distributed systems.
• Proficiency in at least one statically typed language (e.g., Java, Go) plus a scripting language (e.g., Python).

Responsibilities

• Build and operate internal developer platform services - design secure, multi-tenant, and scalable services that integrate into existing DevProd systems, and own their reliability, performance, and monitoring.
• Improve pre-production and performance testing capabilities - model realistic workloads and stress scenarios, automate performance/scale/regression tests as part of CI/CD, and provide actionable, self-service reporting.
• Explore and integrate AI-assisted workflows for developers - evaluate AI tools and frameworks, run data-driven experiments, and productionize workflows with guardrails and visibility.
• Deliver projects end to end in a collaborative way - frame problems, write clear design docs, break work into milestones, drive implementation with peers, and participate in rollout plans with documentation, training, and feedback loops.
• Contribute to team and engineering culture - participate in on-call, incident response, and postmortems; mentor engineers through design and code reviews; help evolve best practices for DevProd and platform engineering.

Skills

Distributed systems

Java/Go

Python scripting

Software design

Reliability

Ownership & execution

Education

BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science or related field

Tools

CI/CD

Containers

Infrastructure as Code

Job description

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

Our team sits within the Developer Productivity (DevProd) organization and is responsible for ensuring that Confluent engineers can safely and efficiently build, test, and operate our cloud at scale. As a Senior Software Engineer, you will design, build, and operate internal platform services and tools that improve developer experience and overall engineering velocity. You'll take ownership of meaningful projects - often with some ambiguity, partnering with senior engineers and stakeholders to shape solutions, implement them, and support them in production and critical pre-prod environments.

This Role Is Ideal For Someone Who

• Enjoys platform services work: multi-tenant, internal-facing services used by hundreds of engineers.
• Cares deeply about testability, reliability, and developer experience in complex, distributed systems.
• Thrives in R&D-leaning, somewhat ambiguous spaces where you prototype, iterate, and converge on the right solution.
• Is curious about practical AI-assisted developer workflows and comfortable learning and evaluating new tools.
• Is highly self-driven, naturally takes initiative, and does things that are important without being asked.

What You Will Do

• Build and operate internal developer platform services - design secure, multi-tenant, and scalable services that integrate into existing DevProd systems (e.g., CI/CD, test infrastructure, developer portals), and own their reliability, performance, and monitoring.
• Improve pre-production and performance testing capabilities - model realistic workloads and stress scenarios, automate performance/scale/regression tests as part of CI/CD, and provide actionable, self-service reporting that helps teams quickly see where their services break or degrade.
• Explore and integrate AI-assisted workflows for developers - evaluate AI tools and frameworks, run data-driven experiments, and, where they add real value, productionize workflows such as triage assistants, anomaly detection over pre-prod metrics, or intelligent test selection, with appropriate guardrails and visibility.
• Deliver projects end to end in a collaborative way - frame problems, write clear design docs, break work into milestones, drive implementation with your peers, and participate in rollout plans that include documentation, training, and feedback loops with partner teams.
• Contribute to team and engineering culture - participate in on-call and incident response for the components you own, write clear documentation, mentor junior engineers through design and code reviews, and help evolve best practices for DevProd and platform engineering.

Preferred Education

Master's Degree

Required Technical And Professional Expertise

• Education & Experience - BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or a related field (or equivalent experience), and at least 5 years of professional software engineering experience building and operating cloud services, platforms, or large-scale distributed systems.
• Technical & Platform Depth - Strong fundamentals in distributed systems and reliability; proficiency in at least one statically typed language (e.g., Java, Go) plus a scripting language (e.g., Python); experience with DevProd/DevOps tooling such as CI/CD, containers, and infrastructure-as-code.
• Execution & Ownership - Demonstrated ability to independently drive projects from design through rollout, breaking work into milestones, managing risk, and delivering high-quality outcomes on time.
• Collaboration & Leadership - Strong written and verbal communication skills; experience mentoring other engineers, leading design and code reviews, and influencing cross-functional stakeholders in a platform setting.
• Operational Excellence - Proven track record owning services in production or critical pre-prod environments, including on-call, incident response, and postmortems, with a strong bias towards automation to reduce toil and improve reliability.
• AI Awareness - Practical experience or strong interest in integrating AI/ML or LLM-based capabilities into developer or platform workflows, along with an understanding of how to design sensible guardrails and instrumentation for safe use. You don't need to be an AI expert, but you're comfortable evaluating and adopting new tools.

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

• Hands-on experience building or integrating AI-powered developer tools (e.g., code assistants, triage copilots, anomaly detection over logs/metrics, intelligent test selection) in production environments.
• Deep experience with performance testing and benchmarking frameworks for distributed systems or multi-tenant cloud services, including workload modeling and automated quality gates.