Confluent - Staff Software Engineer

IBM; Lowell (MA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Software is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design, build, and operate distributed systems at cloud scale, with a focus on Kafka workloads and Confluent Cloud capabilities. You will contribute to broker, compute, networking, and coordination features, ensuring reliability and high performance.

You will collaborate across product and infrastructure teams, participate in on-call and incident response, and mentor peers to foster thoughtful design and ownership.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering experience building and operating distributed systems or large-scale backend services.
• Proficiency in Java or another JVM language, with Kafka or stream processing experience.
• Knowledge of core distributed systems concepts, including concurrency, replication, fault tolerance, and performance tradeoffs.
• Experience designing reliable services and diagnosing issues in production using logs, metrics, traces, and profiling tools.
• A track record of taking ambiguous technical problems from design through delivery and operational ownership.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to collaborate across teams and explain technical decisions.
• A customer focused approach and a commitment to building secure, resilient, maintainable systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and deliver distributed systems features for Kafka based cloud services, with attention to correctness, availability, latency, throughput, and resource efficiency.
• Build and evolve systems that support a Confluent Cloud, including kafka broker, compute, networking, and coordination capabilities.
• Improve production reliability through sound failure handling, service protections, observability, testing, and operational tooling.
• Investigate complex performance and production issues, identify root causes, and drive durable fixes.
• Lead technical design and implementation for projects that cross service and team boundaries, clearly communicating tradeoffs and risks.
• Collaborate with product, infrastructure, and engineering partners to turn customer and platform needs into safe, scalable solutions.
• Participate in code reviews, on call, incident response, and continuous improvement of engineering practices.
• Mentor teammates and contribute to a culture of thoughtful design, ownership, and customer focus.

Skills

Distributed systems

Java

Kafka

System design

Observability

Production operations

Communication

Security/resilience

Education

Master's Degree

Tools

Kafka internals

Kubernetes

Cloud platforms

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'l 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'l have the tools and opportunities to advance your career while creating software that changes the world.

Your Role And Responsibilities

Confluent builds the data streaming platform that helps organizations connect, process, and govern data in real time. Kora Compute builds the secure, reliable, highly available API and compute layers behind Confluent Cloud.

As a Senior Software Engineer on Kora Compute, you will design, build, and operate distributed systems that power Kafka workloads at cloud scale. You may work on broker reliability and performance, platform capabilities, networking, or Kafka coordination services. You will take problems from design through launch and production support, partnering across engineering, product, and cloud infrastructure teams.

What you will do

• Design and deliver distributed systems features for Kafka based cloud services, with attention to correctness, availability, latency, throughput, and resource efficiency.
• Build and evolve systems that support a Confluent Cloud, including kafka broker, compute, networking, and coordination capabilities.
• Improve production reliability through sound failure handling, service protections, observability, testing, and operational tooling.
• Investigate complex performance and production issues, identify root causes, and drive durable fixes.
• Lead technical design and implementation for projects that cross service and team boundaries, clearly communicating tradeoffs and risks.
• Collaborate with product, infrastructure, and engineering partners to turn customer and platform needs into safe, scalable solutions.
• Participate in code reviews, on call, incident response, and continuous improvement of engineering practices.
• Mentor teammates and contribute to a culture of thoughtful design, ownership, and customer focus.

Preferred Education

Master's Degree

Required Technical And Professional Expertise

• Strong software engineering experience building and operating distributed systems or large scale backend services.
• Proficiency in Java or another JVM language, and the ability to work effectively in a large codebase. Kafka or stream processing experience is a plus.
• Knowledge of core distributed systems concepts, including concurrency, consistency, replication, fault tolerance, and performance tradeoffs.
• Experience designing reliable services and diagnosing issues in production using logs, metrics, traces, and profiling tools.
• A track record of taking ambiguous technical problems from design through delivery and operational ownership.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to collaborate across teams and explain technical decisions.
• A customer focused approach and a commitment to building secure, resilient, maintainable systems.

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

• Experience with Apache Kafka internals, brokers, networking, or consumer group coordination.
• Experience with cloud platforms, multi tenant systems, Kubernetes, or cloud networking.
• Experience with high throughput, low latency, or resource intensive services and performance benchmarking.
• Experience with production operations, on call, incident management, and reliability engineering.