Lead Backend Engineer - Real-Time AI & Stream Processing

IBM Computing; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Software seeks an experienced engineer to help build Confluent Cloud’s AI capabilities. You will design and deliver backend services that operate on real-time streaming data, owning end-to-end features from design to deployment.

You’ll coordinate across teams on model lifecycle, inference routing, and agent execution, ensuring reliability and scalable performance. The role emphasizes ship quality—robust tests, clear documentation, and maintainable code—while participating in on-call duties

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience designing, building, and operating distributed systems or cloud-native backend infrastructure in production.
• Strong working knowledge of Kubernetes and distributed-systems patterns (control loops, API servers, high-scale control planes), plus fundamentals like containerization and networking.
• Proficiency in at least one of Go, Java, or Python, and willing to work across all three.
• Track record of leading cross-team technical work and turning ambiguous requirements into designs others can rally behind.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; ability to write a design doc that aligns stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Design and build the backend services (Go, Java, Python) that run AI and model inference on real-time data.
• Own features end to end—drafting the design, aligning stakeholders, and driving to a conclusion.
• Make technical calls on systems that span teams: model lifecycle, inference routing, agent execution.
• Own the quality of what you ship—code, test coverage, documentation, operability, and rollout safety.
• Mentor engineers through code reviews and design feedback, and collaborate across teams to improve processes.
• Participate in on-call for the services your team owns and ensure healthy team rituals.

Skills

Distributed systems

Kubernetes

Go/Java/Python

Cross-team leadership

Technical communication

Tools

Go

Java

Python

Job description

IBM Software seeks an experienced engineer to help build Confluent Cloud’s AI capabilities. You will design and deliver backend services that operate on real-time streaming data, owning end-to-end features from design to deployment.

You’ll coordinate across teams on model lifecycle, inference routing, and agent execution, ensuring reliability and scalable performance. The role emphasizes ship quality—robust tests, clear documentation, and maintainable code—while participating in on-call duties