Senior Software Engineer II - Confluent

**Introduction** 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 and collaboration. 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. **Your role and responsibilities** About the Role: Backend engineers at Confluent work on a set of diverse and complex challenges such as building foundational cloud frameworks and services that power all components of the platform in the Cloud. We are building a new multi-tenant, multi-cloud, polyglot, cloud native compute substrate to enable new business opportunities across Confluent Cloud (including Connect, Apache Flink, Kafka and more) . As a Senior Software Engineer, you think strategically and you help drive end-to-end technical delivery from customer experience to scaling internal operations. You are not confined to the status quo and you leverage your expertise in Cloud-native, large-scale distributed systems to help take our platform to the next level. You worry about key operational aspects (availability, reliability, performance, monitoring, emergency response, capacity planning, disaster recovery) of our new Compute Platform, and you make sure that we have a highly-available, resilient and secure offering that our largest customers can rely on. What You Will Do * Build mission-critical infrastructure: Design, develop, and operationalize high-performance, scalable, and resilient backend services that form the core of the Connect Cloud Platform. * Develop the execution engine: Build the orchestration, auto-scaling, and lifecycle management systems required to reliably run thousands of distributed Kafka Connect workloads in a multi-tenant cloud environment. * Ensure robust isolation & security: Solve complex distributed systems challenges to ensure strict resource isolation, security, and performance guarantees for diverse workloads running on our shared platform. * Troubleshoot & debug: Dive deep into a complex technical stack that includes microservices, Kubernetes, containers, and virtualization to resolve critical issues. * Drive operational excellence: Ensure the operational readiness of our services and consistently meet availability and performance SLA commitments to our customers. * Innovate & improve: Act as a strategic engineer who constantly identifies and implements architectural, process, and operational improvements. **Required technical and professional expertise** * 8+ years industry experience designing, building, scaling and supporting backend systems in production with a solid grasp on good software engineering practices such as code reviews, deep focus on quality, and documentation. * Strong programming and algorithmic skills. Proficiency in a major programming language, e.g. Java, Go, C / C++, Python, etc. * Experience configuring and deploying distributed systems and microservices using modern tools, e.g. Kubernetes, Helm, etc. * Strong focus on project delivery and communication skills. * Experience in driving operational excellence for large, production services. * A strong sense of customer centricity, teamwork, technical leadership and mentorship and are excited about team and company success. * BS, MS, or PhD in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience. **Preferred technical and professional experience** * Proven track record of delivering large-scale, highly available, low latency, high quality systems. * Hands-on technical expertise in large scale systems engineering or distributed systems. IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and 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, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.