Senior Software Engineer - Distributed Systems & Kafka

International Business Machines Corporation; Rochester (MN); On-site; USD 130,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Software in Rochester, MN is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design, build, and operate distributed systems powering Kafka workloads at cloud scale.

You will collaborate with product, infrastructure, and cloud teams to deliver safe, scalable solutions, improve reliability, and drive performance improvements while mentoring teammates and contributing to a culture of design and ownership.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering experience building and operating distributed systems.
• Proficiency in Java or another JVM language; Kafka experience is a plus.
• Knowledge of core distributed systems concepts (concurrency, replication, fault tolerance).
• Experience diagnosing production issues using logs, metrics, traces, and profiling tools.
• Proven ability to take ambiguous problems from design to delivery and ownership.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Skills

Distributed systems

Java

Kafka

Backend services

Communication skills

Job description

IBM Software in Rochester, MN is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design, build, and operate distributed systems powering Kafka workloads at cloud scale.

You will collaborate with product, infrastructure, and cloud teams to deliver safe, scalable solutions, improve reliability, and drive performance improvements while mentoring teammates and contributing to a culture of design and ownership.