Confluent - Senior Software Engineer - Cloud Compute Platform

IBM; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Software is at the heart of IBM’s product and technology landscape, driving AI, data, and hybrid cloud capabilities across diverse industries. We seek a senior software engineer to lead Compute Platform initiatives, building scalable, multi-tenant cloud-native infrastructure and contributing to strategic architectural decisions that empower global, enterprise-grade workloads.

As part of a collaborative team, you’ll own end-to-end features, mentor engineers, and ensure high availability and

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a related field.
• 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.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Skills

Kubernetes

Go

Distributed systems

Multi-tenant security

Leadership

Cross-team collaboration

Education

Bachelor's Degree

Master's Degree

Tools

Kubernetes Operators

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

About Confluent

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

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

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

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Software infuses core business operations with intelligence—from machine learning to generative AI—to help make organizations more responsive, productive, and resilient. IBM Software helps clients put AI into action now to create real value with trust, speed, and confidence across digital labor, IT automation, application modernization, security, and sustainability. Critical to this is the ability to make use of all data, because AI is only as good as the data that fuels it. In most organizations data is spread across multiple clouds, on premises, in private datacenters, and at the edge. IBM’s AI and data platform scales and accelerates the impact of AI with trusted data, and provides leading capabilities to train, tune and deploy AI across business. IBM’s hybrid cloud platform is one of the most comprehensive and consistent approach to development, security, and operations across hybrid environments—a flexible foundation for leveraging data, wherever it resides, to extend AI deep into a business.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all