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 USRequired education
Bachelor's Degree
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 Google Cloud Platform), 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).
ABOUT BUSINESS UNITIBM 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 and consistent approach to development, security, and operations across hybrid environments-a flexible foundation for leveraging data, wherever it resides, to extend AI deep into a business.
YOUR LIFE @ IBMIn 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 IBMIBM'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 DETAILSIBM 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.
This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.
IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.
The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.
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