Director of Cloud Data Systems & Kafka Platform

International Business Machines Corporation; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is seeking an engineering leader to guide Confluent Kafka platform initiatives within IBM Software. You will oversee global engineering teams, set long‑term strategy, and foster innovation to keep IBM at the forefront of real‑time data processing.

In this role, you will prioritize large, high‑impact work, mentor engineers, and drive operational maturity across the cloud‑based stream processing stack.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of second‑level engineering management experience leading productive, high‑functioning teams.
• Maintain a high hiring bar while recruiting, motivating engineers, coaching/mentoring, and managing performance.
• Experience with running large stateful data systems in the cloud.
• Strong fundamentals in distributed systems design and development.
• A great track record of shipping features and hitting deadlines consistently.
• Sense of urgency, an aggressive mindset towards achieving results, and excellent prioritization skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead a highly productive, global team of software engineers and engineering leaders.
• Drive the long‑term direction and strategy of Confluent and Kafka, while partnering with internal stakeholders to drive the team’s mission forward.
• Create competitive advantages for Confluent and Kafka by driving technical innovation.
• Work closely with peer engineering leaders to prioritize improvements in all these areas - from a culture of continuous improvement to prioritizing large and high‑impact initiatives that will fundamentally change Kafka.
• Continue a strong growth trajectory by hiring top tier engineers, and establish quality standards, design principles, and operational maturity for the team.

Skills

Leadership

Staff mentoring

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms

Kafka

Hiring

Prioritization

Job description

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is seeking an engineering leader to guide Confluent Kafka platform initiatives within IBM Software. You will oversee global engineering teams, set long‑term strategy, and foster innovation to keep IBM at the forefront of real‑time data processing.

In this role, you will prioritize large, high‑impact work, mentor engineers, and drive operational maturity across the cloud‑based stream processing stack.