Confluent - Staff Software Engineer - Infrastructure

International Business Machines Corporation

Boston (MA)

On-site

USD 161,000 - 299,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare benefits

401(k) plan

Paid time off

Job summary

IBM is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for its Secure Compute Platform focused on multi-tenant, cloud-native compute across public clouds. You will lead architecture, guide platform APIs and Kubernetes controllers, and drive security models for scalable workloads.

This role emphasizes collaboration with product, SRE, and security teams, and mentors engineers in secure, reliable development. The position requires 10+ years in backend/platform software, deep Kubernetes expertise, and experience

Qualifications

10+ years of backend/platform software experience in production
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent
Proven experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems
Self-starter with strong problem-solving in fast-paced environments
Deep expertise in Kubernetes including controllers and multi-region architectures
Strong programming skills in Go, Scala, or C++
Experience with multi-tenant platform architectures and security/isolation patterns
Hands-on experience with secure container runtimes and Linux internals
Experience with cloud platforms: AWS, GCP, Azure

Responsibilities

Define the technical direction for Secure Compute, including platform architecture and security models
Design and implement Kubernetes controllers/operators to manage workload lifecycles
Collaborate with product/platform teams to shape Secure Compute roadmap
Lead high-impact initiatives in scheduling, networking, deployment, and resource management
Drive design reviews and align architecture with platform objectives
Mentor engineers and promote best practices for secure, reliable platform dev
Own operability: availability, reliability, performance, SLOs, on-call, DR

Skills

Kubernetes expertise

Go programming

Distributed systems

Security/isolation patterns

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Master's Degree

Tools

Kubernetes controllers

Scala/C++

gRPC/Protobuf

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 andcollaboration.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. With Confluent, data doesn’t sit still. We put information in motion, streaming in near real time so organizations can react faster, build smarter, and deliver experiences as dynamic as the world around them.

Your role and responsibilities

About the Team

The Secure Compute Team builds and operates the foundational infrastructure layer that powers Confluent Cloud. Our mission is to enable the secure execution of code and data processing in multi‑tenant environments across AWS, Azure, and GCP at scale. We provide the essential building blocks, including isolation, identity, and networking, that empower both our customers and internal product teams to innovate without compromising security.

As Confluent’s product portfolio continues to expand, our team sits at the center of the company’s growth strategy. We own a polyglot, container‑based runtime that operates across thousands of clusters globally, solving some of the most complex challenges in distributed systems and cloud‑native architecture. By balancing world‑class security with operational efficiency, we ensure Confluent Cloud remains the trusted platform for mission‑critical workloads, even in the most highly regulated industries.

About the Role

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Secure Compute Platform team, you will be a key technical leader responsible for building and evolving a next‑generation, multi‑tenant, cloud‑native compute platform that safely runs both trusted and untrusted workloads at scale. Our platform is built on Kubernetes and operates across a large fleet of clusters spanning multiple public clouds, providing a unified abstraction layer for workload execution, lifecycle management, security, and operational excellence.

Define and drive the technical direction for Secure Compute, including platform architecture, runtime capabilities, and security models for running trusted and untrusted workloads at scale
Design and implement platform APIs and Kubernetes controllers/operators, primarily in Go, that power workload lifecycle management, autoscaling, placement, and workload isolation for containers and serverless‑style functions
Partner with product and platform teams to shape and deliver the Secure Compute roadmap, enabling new customer‑facing capabilities and internal platforms to build on a common compute substrate
Lead high‑impact initiatives in areas such as workload scheduling, failure and disruption handling, private and public networking architectures, deployment and rollout strategies, and fleet‑wide resource management
Drive technical design reviews and influence architectural decisions across teams, ensuring Secure Compute services are easy to adopt, secure by default, and aligned with broader platform objectives
Mentor and develop engineers through technical leadership, design guidance, code reviews, pair programming, and the promotion of best practices for secure, reliable, and scalable platform development
Own operational excellence for critical Secure Compute services, including availability, reliability, performance, service level objectives (SLOs), on‑call operations, incident response, and disaster recovery

This role can be performed remotely from anywhere within the United States.

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

Master's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

10+ years of relevant experience delivering scalable backend, infrastructure or platform software in production

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience

Proven experience building and operating large‑scale, highly available distributed systems

Self‑starter with strong problem‑solving skills and the ability to thrive in a fast‑paced environment

Deep expertise in Kubernetes, including controller development, operator patterns, and preferably multi‑region and multi‑cluster architectures

Strong proficiency in Go, Scala, C++, or other statically typed programming languages, with experience building production‑grade services and control planes.

Experience with multi‑tenant platform architectures and security/isolation patterns (for example, namespaces, network policies, sandboxing, secrets management, identity and access management)

Hands‑on experience with secure container runtimes and Linux internals (for example, Kata containers, Cloud Hypervisor, cgroups, namespaces, seccomp)

Experience troubleshooting and optimizing performance for containerized and virtualized workloads

Familiarity with gRPC, Protocol Buffers (Protobuf), and platform API design for service‑to‑service communication

Experience working with public cloud platforms and integrations, including AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure

Strong collaboration skills with a track record of partnering effectively across Product, SRE/Operations, Security, and Engineering teams

Demonstrated technical leadership and mentorship experience, including driving cross‑functional alignment on architecture, strategy, and execution

Preferred technical and professional experience

Experience in one or more of the following domains: storage systems, computer orchestration, networking, security engineering, performance engineering

Familiarity with Kubernetes ecosystem technologies, including service meshes and modern cloud‑native architectures

Contributions to open‑source infrastructure or cloud platform projects

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 fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being
Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long‑term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs
Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law
Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI‑driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry‑recognized certifications to achieve their career goals
Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.

IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full‑time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job‑related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro‑rated for those who start working during the calendar year.

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