Director II, Engineering

Location: Palo Alto, California

Employment Type: FullTime

Department Engineering

Overview

We’re not just building better tech. We’re rewriting how data moves and what the world can do with it. With Confluent, data doesn’t sit still. Our platform puts information in motion, streaming in near real-time so companies can react faster, build smarter, and deliver experiences as dynamic as the world around them.

It takes a certain kind of person to join this team. Those who ask hard questions, give honest feedback, and show up for each other. No egos, no solo acts. Just smart, curious humans pushing toward something bigger, together.

One Confluent. One Team. One Data Streaming Platform.

Director II, Compute Platform & Unified Deployment

Confluent is pioneering a fundamentally new category of data infrastructure focused on data in motion. Have you ever found a new favorite series on Netflix, picked up groceries curbside at Walmart, or paid for something using Square? That’s the power of data in motion in action—giving organizations instant access to the massive amounts of data that is constantly flowing throughout their business. At Confluent, we’re building the foundational platform for this new paradigm of data infrastructure. Our cloud-native offering is designed to be the intelligent connective tissue enabling real-time data, from multiple sources, to constantly stream across the organization. With Confluent, organizations can create a central nervous system to innovate and win in a digital-first world.

We’re looking for self-motivated team members who crave a challenge and feel energized to roll up their sleeves and help realize Confluent’s enormous potential. Chart your own path and take healthy risks as we solve big problems together. We value having diverse teams and want you to grow as we grow—whether you’re just starting out in your career or managing a large team, you’ll be amazed at the magnitude of your impact.

About the Role:

As Director II of the Compute Platform & Unified Deployment org, you will be working closely with the team and other key stakeholders to design, architect and build out our secure, multi-tenant, polyglot, Cloud-native Compute substrate to enable new business opportunities across Confluent Cloud (including Kafka, Flink, Connect, Tableflow, Confluent Intelligence, and more) . As one of the senior technical leaders in R&D, 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 Platform & the Products built on top of it, and you make sure that we have a highly-available, resilient and secure offering that our largest Fortune 500 customers can rely on for their mission-critical workloads. If you love the hum of big data systems, thinking about how to make them run as smoothly as possible, and want to have a big influence on the architecture plus operational design points of this new product, then you will fit right in.

What You’ll Do:

• Be part of driving the overall technical charter for the Compute Platform & Unified Deployment org -- including, but not limited to cloud infrastructure, big data, security & AI

• Work closely with product management and engineering management to build and drive the overall roadmap for Confluent’s Compute Platform to enable new business opportunities

• Deliver high impact to the business by driving important technical initiatives in areas comprising (but not limited to) security, reliability, multi-tenancy, architectural direction, and major component refactor across organizational boundaries

• Be as a strong technical leader and representative for engineering across the Compute organization

• Lead the team and the product on aspects of product definition, architectural design, and delivery

Who You Are:

• A smart, humble, and empathetic attitude

• A strong sense of teamwork and are excited about team and company success

• Drive and excitement about challenges of a fast-paced, innovative software startup environment

What we're looking for:

• 10+ years of experience in delivering scalable software solutions

• Proven track record of leading the delivery of large-scale, highly available, low latency, high quality systems

• Deep hands-on technical expertise in hyper-scale distributed systems engineering

• Deep expertise in multi-cluster / multi-tenant Kubernetes a big plus

• Deep expertise in safe deployment of mission-critical workloads at high-scale a big plus

• Expertise in Language Runtimes (JVM, WASM, CPython, etc.) a big plus

• Expertise in Container & Virtualization/Hypervisor technologies (firecracker/gVisor/ cloud-hypervisor/kata-containers, etc.)

• Experience in large-scale safe deployment technologies & best practices

• Experience in Cloud Native technologies including networking & security

• Experience in driving operational excellence for large, production services

• Track record of providing technical leadership and mentorship

• Track record of working collaboratively across teams and roles, including but not limited to product management, UX, and other engineering teams and leaders.

Ready to build what's next? Let’s get in motion.

Come As You Are

Belonging isn’t a perk here. It’s the baseline. We work across time zones and backgrounds, knowing the best ideas come from different perspectives. And we make space for everyone to lead, grow, and challenge what’s possible.

We’re proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. Employment decisions are based on job-related criteria, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other classification protected by law.

Privacy Statement

Confluent is an IBM subsidiary which has been acquired by IBM and will be integrated into the IBM organization. By proceeding with this application, you understand that Confluent will share your personal information with other IBM affiliates involved in your recruitment process, wherever these are located. More Information on how IBM protects your personal information, including the safeguards in case of cross-border data transfer, are available here ( .