Confluent - Staff Software Engineer

IBM; Tucson (AZ); On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Software in the United States seeks a Senior Software Engineer on Kora Compute to design, build, and operate distributed systems powering Kafka workloads at cloud scale. You will work with across engineering, product, and cloud infrastructure teams to deliver safe, scalable solutions.

Join a culture of curiosity, collaboration, and continuous learning as you tackle complex reliability, performance, and ownership challenges and mentor teammates toward thoughtful design and customer focus.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering experience building and operating distributed systems or large-scale backend services.
• Proficiency in Java or another JVM language; Kafka or stream processing is a plus.
• Knowledge of distributed systems concepts: concurrency, replication, fault tolerance, latency tradeoffs.
• Experience designing reliable services and diagnosing production issues using logs, metrics, traces, and profiling tools.
• Track record of taking ambiguous technical problems from design through delivery and ownership.
• Strong written and verbal communication; able to collaborate across teams.

Responsibilities

• Design and deliver distributed systems features for Kafka-based cloud services.
• Build and evolve systems supporting Confluent Cloud: broker, compute, networking, and coordination.
• Improve production reliability with failure handling, observability, testing, and tooling.
• Investigate performance and production issues; identify root causes and implement fixes.
• Lead technical design and implementation across services and teams.
• Collaborate with product, infrastructure, engineering to translate needs into scalable solutions.
• Participate in code reviews, on-call, incident response, and continuous improvement.
• Mentor teammates and promote thoughtful design and customer focus.

Skills

Distributed systems

Java/JVM

Production diagnostics

Communication

Tools

Kafka

Observability tools

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.

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.

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.

IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and 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, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.