Confluent - Cloud Subject Matter Expert

IBM; City of Poughkeepsie (NY, AR); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Software in the United States is seeking a Cloud Subject Matter Expert to elevate client experience by resolving complex issues in Kafka and Confluent Cloud, guiding architecture decisions, and driving production readiness across distributed environments.

You will partner with cross‑functional teams, lead design reviews, provide hands‑on workshops, and coach customers toward self‑sufficiency while aligning security, governance and operational excellence.

Qualifications

• Master's Degree required or equivalent in a relevant field.
• Experience leading enterprise Kafka and Confluent Cloud initiatives.
• Strong ability to analyze complex distributed systems and drive solutions.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary technical authority for Kafka and Confluent Cloud platforms.
• Lead architectural reviews and design discussions for event-driven architectures.
• Provide hands-on architecture reviews, workshops and enablement for customers.
• Drive production readiness, monitoring, and operational excellence across deployments.
• Coordinate with cross-functional teams to deliver effective, scalable solutions.
• Support incident response and root-cause analysis to prevent recurrence.

Skills

Technical leadership

Troubleshooting

Cross-functional collaboration

Knowledge sharing

Problem solving

Communication

Education

Master's Degree

Tools

Kafka

Confluent Cloud

Kafka Streams

Apache Flink

Schema Registry

Kafka Connect

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.

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 Cloud Subject Matter Expert, you play a key role in enhancing the client experience and resolving issues impacting IBM client business. You lead the problem resolution process through analysis and troubleshooting of various complexity issues to ensure client satisfaction and minimize business impact.

Your Primary Responsibilities Will Include

• Serving as the primary technical authority, escalation point and design advisor for the customer’s Kafka and Confluent Cloud platform, partnering with platform, application and SRE teams
• Advising on the optimization of data streaming architectures and adoption of Confluent functionality and best practices to maximize business value, ROI, resilience and stability of production workloads
• Designing and reviewing enterprise-grade event-driven architectures, including topic design, schema strategy, data contracts and integration patterns
• Proactively identifying and resolving operational issues before they affect business continuity, while advising on production readiness, monitoring, capacity planning, failure handling, operational runbooks and change management
• Guiding security, access control, governance, risk, compliance and audit alignment for platform usage
• Delivering hands‑on architecture reviews, technical workshops and best‑practice coaching to promote customer self-sufficiency
• Supporting incident response and root cause analysis while contributing to proof‑of‑concept development, operational software designs, reusable patterns and customer‑informed product improvements

Preferred Education

Master's Degree

Required Technical And Professional Expertise

Required Professional and Technical Expertise:

• Technical leadership as an authority, escalation point or design advisor for enterprise Kafka and Confluent Cloud platforms
• Analysis and troubleshooting of complex technical issues across distributed systems and client IT environments, including performance, reliability, connectivity, configuration, billing and account‑related issues, along with the development of solutions or workarounds that minimize business impact
• Design or review of event‑driven architectures and guidance on production readiness, operational excellence and change management
• Coordination and collaboration with cross‑functional teams, including Development, Services, Field, Support, Engineering, platform, application and SRE teams, to deliver relevant, timely and effective solutions
• Creation and reuse of knowledge assets, technical documentation and enablement content to promote client self‑sufficiency and improve team effectiveness
• Use of case data and client feedback to drive improvements in product quality, functionality, serviceability and usability

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

Preferred Professional and Technical Expertise :

• Proficiency with Kafka, Confluent Cloud, Kafka Streams, Apache Flink, Schema Registry and Kafka Connect in enterprise production environments
• Advanced troubleshooting of complex distributed‑system and client IT environment issues involving multiple services, integrations, dependencies or failure modes
• Delivery of hands‑on architecture reviews, technical workshops and deep‑dive sessions while developing secure, governed and reusable solutions that promote self‑sufficiency for developers, platform teams and operations teams
• Work in regulated or highly controlled environments, contributing product feedback, reference architectures, reusable patterns and technical documentation based on enterprise customer use cases