Confluent - Senior Software Engineer - Cloud Platform

IBM; Tucson (AZ); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Software is seeking a senior backend engineer to help build data infrastructure on a cloud-native platform with multi-tenant, distributed systems. You will own backend design, use languages like Python, Go, and Java, and work with AWS/GCP/Azure and Docker/Kubernetes to deliver scalable services.

You will influence architecture, drive projects end to end, and mentor peers while ensuring observability and reliability across the product.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of backend design, build, and production support.
• Strong knowledge of Python runtimes and environments.
• Proficiency in Python, Go, C/C++, Java.
• Experience with public clouds and container orchestration.
• Strong leadership and collaboration abilities.
• Experience with observability and incident response.

Responsibilities

• Own and lead the design and implementation of complex backend services in a cloud-native, microservices-based environment.
• Balance reliability, scalability, performance, and operability in architectural decisions.
• Drive projects end to end from requirements and design through deployment and operation.
• Improve service reliability with SLOs/SLAs and observability practices.
• Collaborate across teams to define APIs and data models for a coherent platform.
• Mentor engineers through reviews and guidance to grow team capabilities.

Skills

Python

Go

C/C++

Java

Cloud platforms

Docker

Kubernetes

Observability

Leadership

Communication

Education

Master's Degree

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

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

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.

About The Role

The next big goal for Confluent is to make it as easy as possible for anyone to use Confluent’s products, including Kafka, to build their next killer streaming application. We are at the beginning of this journey and are looking for great engineers to come join our world-class team that is passionate about building and running large-scale, multi-tenant distributed systems for customers that expect a very high level of availability.

Backend engineers at Confluent work on a set of diverse and complex challenges such as building foundational cloud frameworks and services that power all components of the platform in the Cloud. We are building a new multi-tenant, multi-cloud, polyglot, cloud native compute substrate to enable new business opportunities across Confluent Cloud (including Connect, Apache Flink, Kafka and more) . As a senior software engineer, you think strategically and you help drive end-to-end technical delivery from customer experience to scaling internal operations. You are not confined to the status quo, and you leverage your expertise in Cloud-native, large-scale distributed systems to help take our platform to the next level. You worry about key operational aspects (availability, reliability, performance, monitoring, emergency response, capacity planning, disaster recovery) of our new Compute Platform, and you make sure that we have a highly available, resilient and secure offering that our largest customers can rely on. If you love the hum of big data systems, thinking about how to make them run as smoothly as possible, and want to have a big influence on the architecture plus operational design points of this new product, then you will fit right in.

What You Will Do

• Own and lead the design and implementation of complex backend services and systems in a cloud-native, microservices-based environment.
• Make architecture and technical decisions that balance reliability, scalability, performance, and operability, and clearly communicate the tradeoffs.
• Drive projects end to end: from requirements and design through implementation, rollout, and ongoing operation in production.
• Improve service reliability and operations by defining SLOs/SLAs, strengthening observability, and participating in on call as needed.
• Collaborate across teams to define APIs, integration points, and data models that keep the platform coherent and evolvable.
• Identify and drive platform and productivity improvements (tooling, automation, process) that raise the bar for the broader engineering organization.
• Mentor and support other engineers through code reviews, design reviews, and technical guidance, helping grow the team’s capabilities.
• Contribute to a culture of continuous improvement, inclusive collaboration, and high technical standards.

Preferred Education

Master's Degree

Required Technical And Professional Expertise

• 4+ years industry experience designing, building, and supporting backend systems in production with a solid grasp on good software engineering practices such as code reviews, deep focus on quality, and documentation
• Strong knowledge of Python runtime environments (virtual environments, package management, and interpreter configurations).
• Strong programming and algorithmic skills. Proficiency in a major programming language, e.g. Python, Go, C / C++, Java, etc.
• Strong experience running services in a public cloud (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including containers and orchestration (for example, Docker, Kubernetes) and modern cloud native technologies.
• Expertise in other Language Runtimes / VMs (JVM/WASM, etc.) a big plus.
• A track record of technical leadership: driving projects, influencing architecture, and coordinating work across multiple engineers or teams.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to align stakeholders, explain complex ideas clearly, and drive decisions.
• Experience with observability and operational excellence (metrics, logging, tracing, incident response, and postmortems).