Senior Software Engineer II - Confluent Cloud Platform

IBM; Markham; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Software in the UK is seeking a Senior Software Engineer II to own backend systems powering Confluent data streaming across multi-cloud and on-prem environments. You will design, build, and operate resilient services at scale, collaborating across regions and teams to enable fast, reliable data motion.

You will contribute to code quality, testing, documentation, and incident response while mentoring others and driving initiatives that improve performance and reliability.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of backend experience in production systems.
• Proficiency in a major language (Go or similar).
• Experience with distributed data stores (DynamoDB, Cosmos, Spanner, Cassandra, or similar).
• Experience with at least one major cloud (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Observability and operational excellence (SLOs, on-call, incident response).
• Strong engineering practices — code review, testing, and documentation.

Responsibilities

• Build and evolve the metadata platform — the read, write, and streaming APIs.
• Solve hard distributed-systems problems — availability, consistency, sharding, scaling.
• Design, build, and operate resilient, scalable systems across a stack spanning multiple clouds and services.
• Independently drive projects — spot high-impact gaps.

Skills

Backend design

Go programming

Concurrency control

Distributed data stores

Cloud platforms

Observability

Ownership & velocity

Engineering practices

Education

Master’s Degree

Tools

Kubernetes

Kafka

Job description

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.

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

We’re not just building better tech. We’re rewriting how data moves and what the world can do with it. With Confluent, data doesn’t sit still. Our platform puts information in motion, streaming in near real-time so companies can react faster, build smarter, and deliver experiences as dynamic as the world around them.

It takes a certain kind of person to join this team. Those who ask hard questions, give honest feedback, and show up for each other. No egos, no solo acts. Just smart, curious humans pushing toward something bigger, together.

Senior Software Engineers II at Confluent take ownership of critical backend systems that underpin our data streaming platform. You’ll lead the design and delivery of large-scale, distributed services that must be secure, highly available, and easy to operate across regions and clouds.

The team owns a highly available, scalable metadata store — the source of truth that services across Confluent Cloud build on. It serves low-latency read and write APIs, and streams data in real time. The platform is a foundational backbone of a broader effort to re-architect Confluent Cloud and replacing bespoke, per-team datastores with a single self-serve platform.

Responsibilities

• Build and evolve the metadata platform — the read, write, and streaming APIs
• Solve hard distributed-systems problems — availability, consistency, sharding, scaling
• Design, build, and operate resilient, scalable systems across a stack spanning multiple clouds and services
• Independently drive projects — spot high-impact gap

Preferred Education

Master’s Degree

Required Technical And Professional Expertise

• 6+ years of industry experience designing, building, and operating large-scale backend services in production
• Strong programming and algorithmic skills, with proficiency in a major language (Go or similar)
• Strong command of concurrency and correctness — reasoning about and preventing race conditions
• Hands-on experience with distributed data stores (DynamoDB, Cosmos, Spanner, Cassandra, or similar)
• Experience with at least one major cloud (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Observability and operational excellence — SLOs, on-call, incident response, and postmortems
• High ownership and drive — self-managed execution with velocity in a fast-paced platform team
• Strong engineering practices — code review, testing, documentation, and clear written and verbal communication

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

• Familiarity with Kubernetes operators and controller patterns
• Event streaming experience — Kafka, event ordering, idempotency, and at-least/exactly-once delivery