(Confluent) Staff Software Engineer II - Confluent Cloud Infrastructure & Platform

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 To realize Confluent's enormous potential, we are looking for a Staff Software Engineer 2 to join our Traffic team which is responsible for building and managing the networking fabric of Confluent Cloud. Cloud networking is a strategic investment area for Confluent with the potential to impact the company's top and bottom line. The network platform powers both customer connectivity as well as internal connectivity spanning thousands of Kubernetes clusters across all regions in AWS, Azure, and GCP. We are looking for someone with an interest in building large-scale distributed systems, with a focus on building and managing network data planes for containerized workloads in the cloud. The ideal candidate would be passionate about network data plane performance, scale, cost optimizations, and building robust software. What you will do: Build the software underpinning the mission-critical Confluent Cloud network data plane platform. You will play a crucial role in architecting, designing, developing and operationalizing high performance, scalable, reliable and resilient systems. Deliver high impact to the business by driving important technical initiatives in areas comprising (but not limited to) networking, cloud infrastructure, and multi-tenancy. Independently drive execution of software projects as well as technically lead a team of engineers to deliver impact in production with a focus on quality. Build upon open source software and engage with the upstream community to deliver business impact. Troubleshoot issues and improve ops for complex technical stack that spans all the 3 clouds and includes microservices, containers, and virtualization. This job can be performed from anywhere in the US Required technical and professional expertise 10+ years of relevant cloud infrastructure/cloud networking experience Strong fundamentals in distributed systems design and development Experience building and operating large-scale systems Experience leading a team of engineers and working cross-team to deliver complex infrastructure projects Solid understanding of basic systems operations (storage, network, operating systems, etc.) Proficiency in C++, Go, Python, or other statically typed languages Experience/knowledge with public clouds (AWS, Azure, or GCP) Experience building and managing Layer 7 proxies, especially cloud-native proxies such as Envoy Preferred technical and professional experience Open source contributions to CNCF projects Experience with Kubernetes Networking Strong networking background combined with your software engineering experience Education in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience 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. IBM