Senior Software Engineer - Confluent DevProd

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. With Confluent, data doesn’t sit still. We put information in motion, streaming in near real time so organizations can react faster, build smarter, and deliver experiences as dynamic as the world around them.

Your Role And Responsibilities

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join our Developer Productivity (DevProd) team. Our team is responsible for ensuring that Confluent engineers can safely and efficiently build, test, and operate our cloud at scale. In this role, you will help design, build, and operate internal platform services and tools that improve developer experience and engineering velocity for teams building all Confluent products — including Kafka, Flink, Connect and more.

You will contribute meaningfully to features and projects, working alongside engineers and stakeholders to shape solutions, implement them, and support them in production and critical pre‑prod environments. You'll apply your knowledge of cloud-native, distributed systems to write quality code, review your peers' work, and grow into deeper ownership of components in your area.

This Role Is Ideal For Someone Who

• Enjoys platform services work — multi-tenant, internal-facing services used by hundreds of engineers.
• Cares deeply about testability, reliability, and developer experience in complex, distributed systems.
• Enjoys learning new domains and contributing in R&D-leaning spaces where requirements evolve.
• Is curious about practical AI-assisted developer workflows and eager to evaluate new tools.
• Communicates clearly with teammates, asks good questions, and learns from feedback.
  
  

What You Will Do

• Explore AI-assisted developer workflows— evaluate AI tools and frameworks, run experiments, and help integrate useful ones with appropriate guardrails (e.g., coding assistants, intelligent test caching and avoidance, skills and workflows to optimize repetitive developer tasks).
• Build and maintain foundational developer infrastructure— including source code repository management, build automation, artifact management, containerization, and CI/CD pipelines for both our cloud and on-premise platforms.
• Contribute to internal developer platform services— implement features for secure, multi-tenant services that assist with and accelerate the SDLC (e.g., service bootstrapping, test infrastructure, developer portals), and help keep them reliable and well-monitored.
• Participate in design and code reviews— contribute to one-pagers and design docs for your work, review peers' PRs constructively, and incorporate feedback.
• Participate in on-call and team best practices— share in on-call rotation for components your team owns, follow tested runbooks for production operations, write clear documentation, and collaborate with engineers on other teams to unblock cross-team efforts.
  
  

This job can be performed from anywhere in the US

Preferred Education

Master's Degree

Required Technical And Professional Expertise

• Education & Experience— BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or a related field (or equivalent experience), and 3+ years of professional software engineering experience building cloud services, platforms, or distributed systems.
• Technical Foundations— Solid grasp of algorithms, data structures, and distributed systems fundamentals; proficiency in at least one statically typed language (e.g., Java, Go) plus a scripting language (e.g., Python).
• DevOps Familiarity— Hands-on experience with CI/CD systems (e.g., Jenkins, GitHub Actions), containers, and at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP), along with working knowledge of source control (Git) and build frameworks (e.g., Maven, Gradle, Bazel).
• Quality & Operations— Write code with appropriate testing, logging, and error handling; comfortable running production operations from documented runbooks and participating in on-call rotations.
• Collaboration & Communication— Clear written and verbal communication; participate constructively in design discussions and PR reviews; work effectively with engineers across teams to unblock yourself and your peers.
• AI Curiosity— Interest in integrating AI/ML or LLM-based capabilities into developer or platform workflows. Youdon'tneed prior AI experience, but you're comfortable learning and evaluating new tools.
  
  

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

• Hands-on experience building or integrating AI-powered developer tools (e.g., code assistants, triage copilots, anomaly detection over logs/metrics, intelligent test selection).
• Experience with configuration management and infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tools, plus secrets management (e.g., Ansible, Puppet, Packer, Terraform, Consul, Vault).
• Working knowledge of databases, caching, and messaging systems (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka).