Confluent - Principal Engineer

IBM; Lowell (MA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Software seeks a Principal Engineer to shape the Confluent Cloud control plane and drive the next generation of data management across clouds. You will lead cross-functional teams, set a long-term technical vision, and raise the bar for reliability, performance, and AI-driven tooling.

Join a collaborative, innovation-driven culture that values curiosity and delivering scalable, real-time data solutions. You will mentor others and influence architecture across the organization.

Qualifications

• Experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Fundamentals in distributed systems: consistency, coordination, performance and operations.
• Track record setting technical strategy and executing on a roadmap.
• Strong customer focus and ability to work closely with product teams to shape our roadmap.
• Collaborative leadership and strong communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Set long-term technical vision for the Confluent Cloud Control Plane, working with engineering and product leadership.
• Lead large-scale, cross-organizational projects from design to delivery, while staying hands-on with code and systems.
• Raise the bar for quality, availability, resilience and scalability; promote responsible use of AI throughout the lifecycle.
• Coach and mentor engineers to develop talent and foster a collaborative engineering culture.
• Partner across the company to influence strategy and architecture in support of our vision for Confluent Cloud resource management.

Skills

Distributed systems

Technical leadership

Roadmap execution

Cross-team collaboration

Customer focus

Communication skills

Tools

Kubernetes

Kafka

Flink

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

Join us in building the next generation of Confluent Cloud, shaping how the world builds data systems. We help organizations put data in motion: capturing, transporting, and transforming it to meet the growing demand for real-time information.

Behind this experience is the Cloud Control Plane, the globally distributed systems that manage customer resources across clouds and regions. We provide the shared capabilities that help Confluent teams manage resources consistently, including and services for resource metadata and API management, as well as customer-facing capabilities for resource management.

As a Principal Engineer, you'll shape the direction of these foundational systems, lead high-impact initiatives, and raise the bar for reliability, quality, and operations. You'll work across engineering and product teams to advance our vision for resource management in Confluent Cloud, while helping engineers and technical leaders grow.

What you'll do

• Set and communicate a long-term technical vision for the Confluent Cloud Control Plane, working closely with engineering and product leadership
• Lead large-scale, cross-organizational projects from design to delivery. Balance working broadly while keeping hands-on with our code and systems.
• Raise the bar for quality, availability, resilience and scalability, and be a driving force to improve our development and operational processes. Be a voice for and model the effective and responsible use of AI throughout the development lifecycle.
• Coach and mentor engineers and others to develop talent and foster a supportive engineering culture
• Partner across the company to understand and influence strategy and architecture in support of our vision for Confluent Cloud resource management

Required Technical And Professional Expertise

• Extensive experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems, including systems that are globally distributed with high availability
• Strong fundamentals in distributed systems, including consistency and coordination, performance and operational characteristics and real-world settings
• A track record of setting technical strategy, partnering across engineering and product teams to set direction, and executing on a roadmap
• Strong customer focus and ability to work closely with product teams to shape our overall roadmap
• A collaborative approach to leadership and strong communication skills

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

• Experience building multi-cloud systems, cloud control planes, or distributed key-value stores or databases
• An understanding and real-world experience with Kubernetes internals or contributions to the Kubernetes codebase
• Curiosity, thoughtfulness and experience building and operating systems with AI-driven tools and approaches
• Experience with data streaming systems, such as Kafka and Flink