Confluent - Senior Software Engineer II

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

With Confluent, organizations can harness the full power of continuously flowing data to innovate and win in the modern digital world. We have a purpose that drives us to do better every day - we're creating an entirely new category within data infrastructure - data streaming. This technology will allow every organization to create experiences and use the power of data in ways that profoundly impact the way we all live. This impact is our purpose and drives us to do better every day. One Confluent. One team. One Data Streaming Platform. Data Connects Us.
The Confluent Cloud Platform based on Apache Kafka is the leading Cloud Native Platform as a Service for streaming data infrastructure, but this is just the beginning. We are building a PaaS, enabling customers around the globe to deliver streaming applications.

What You Will Do:

• Design, build, and evolve internal infrastructure services written in Go, often as Kubernetes operators, that power the core platform behind Confluent Cloud
• Own the systems that make cloud infrastructure secure, scalable, observable, and reliable, using GitOps, Terraform, Prometheus, Grafana, and a strong foundation in Linux, networking, and public cloud
• Collaborate with engineers across Confluent to enable fast, safe, and autonomous deployment of services through shared platform tooling and best practices
• Take shared responsibility for the full lifecycle of our infrastructure: availability, performance, monitoring, incident response, and capacity planning
• Work on systems at scale, across tens of thousands of instances and multiple regions, with a focus on smooth, fast, and safe operations
• Influence the architecture and operational strategy behind the critical infrastructure that supports all of Confluent's cloud services
  Participate in a 8-hour, follow-the-sun on-call rotation.

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

Master's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• Strong programming skills with the ability to read, debug, and evolve existing code (Go, Java, or Python) Deep understanding of systems internals (filesystems, memory, networking, kernel behavior) and large-scale system performance
• Hands‑on experience with Kubernetes in production and modern cloud-native ecosystems, including containers and public cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)
• Expertise in automation and reliability practices—GitOps, Terraform, CI/CD, observability—and experience diagnosing and improving complex systems
• Strong collaboration, communication, and ownership mindset, with the ability to operate independently in a distributed team

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Strong programming skills with the ability to read, debug, and evolve existing code (Go, Java, or Python) Deep understanding of systems internals (filesystems, memory, networking, kernel behavior) and large-scale system performance
• Hands‑on experience with Kubernetes in production and modern cloud-native ecosystems, including containers and public cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)
• Expertise in automation and reliability practices—GitOps, Terraform, CI/CD, observability—and experience diagnosing and improving complex systems

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Software infuses core business operations with intelligence-from machine learning to generative AI to help make organizations more responsive, productive, and resilient. IBM Software helps clients put AI into action now to create real value with trust, speed, and confidence across digital labor, IT automation, application modernization, security, and sustainability. Critical to this is the ability to make use of all data, because AI is only as good as the data that fuels it. In most organizations data is spread across multiple clouds, on premises, in private datacenters, and at the edge. IBM's AI and data platform scales and accelerates the impact of AI with trusted data, and provides leading capabilities to train, tune and deploy AI across business. IBM's hybrid cloud platform is one of the most comprehensive, consistent approach to development, security, and operations across hybrid environments - flexible foundation for leveraging data, wherever it resides, to extend AI deep into a business.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you'll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you'll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM's greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we're also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it's time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM 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, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

- Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being

- Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs

- Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law

- Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals

- Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

Projected Minimum Salary per year: 131,000.00

Projected Maximum Salary per year: 245,000.00

City / Township / Village: Georgia, Minnesota, Texas, New York, North Carolina, Arizona, Washington, Massachusetts, California

Country: United States

Work arrangement: Remote

Area of work: Software Engineering

Employment type: Regular

Contract type: Regular

Position type: Professional

Some travel may be required based on business demand

Company: (0147) International Business Machines Corporation

Shift: General (daytime)