Principal Engineer: AI-Driven Cloud Control Plane

International Business Machines Corporation; Lowell (MA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Software seeks a Principal Engineer to shape the Confluent Cloud control plane and drive the next generation of data management across clouds. You will lead cross-functional teams, set a long-term technical vision, and raise the bar for reliability, performance, and AI-driven tooling.

Join a collaborative, innovation-driven culture that values curiosity and delivering scalable, real-time data solutions. You will mentor others and influence architecture across the organization.

Qualifications

• Experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Fundamentals in distributed systems: consistency, coordination, performance and operations.
• Track record setting technical strategy and executing on a roadmap.
• Strong customer focus and ability to work closely with product teams to shape our roadmap.
• Collaborative leadership and strong communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Set long-term technical vision for the Confluent Cloud Control Plane, working with engineering and product leadership.
• Lead large-scale, cross-organizational projects from design to delivery, while staying hands-on with code and systems.
• Raise the bar for quality, availability, resilience and scalability; promote responsible use of AI throughout the lifecycle.
• Coach and mentor engineers to develop talent and foster a collaborative engineering culture.
• Partner across the company to influence strategy and architecture in support of our vision for Confluent Cloud resource management.

Skills

Distributed systems

Technical leadership

Roadmap execution

Cross-team collaboration

Customer focus

Communication skills

Tools

Kubernetes

Kafka

Flink

Job description

IBM Software seeks a Principal Engineer to shape the Confluent Cloud control plane and drive the next generation of data management across clouds. You will lead cross-functional teams, set a long-term technical vision, and raise the bar for reliability, performance, and AI-driven tooling.

Join a collaborative, innovation-driven culture that values curiosity and delivering scalable, real-time data solutions. You will mentor others and influence architecture across the organization.