Software Engineer - Confluent

IBM
IBM

Software Engineering

California, USA · Texas City, TX, USA

Posted on Jun 20, 2026
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

Backend engineers at Confluent work on a set of diverse and complex challenges such as building foundational cloud frameworks and services that power all components of the platform in the Cloud. We are building a new multi-tenant, multi-cloud, polyglot, cloud native compute substrate to enable new business opportunities across Confluent Cloud (including Connect, Apache Flink, Kafka and more) . As a senior software engineer, 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 new Compute Platform, and you make sure that we have a highly-available, resilient and secure offering that our largest customers can rely on.

What You Will Do:

  • Build mission-critical backend services that deliver value to our customers. You will play a crucial role in architecting, designing, developing and operationalizing high performance, scalable, reliable and resilient services

  • Troubleshoot and debug technical issues inside a deep and complex technical stack that includes microservices, containers, and virtualization

  • Ensure operational readiness of the services and meet the availability and performance SLA commitments to our customers

  • A strategic engineer who constantly thinks of process and operational improvements

Required education
Bachelor's Degree
Preferred education
Master's Degree
Required technical and professional expertise
  • Demonstrated experience designing, building, scaling and supporting backend systems in production with a solid grasp on good software engineering practices such as code reviews, deep focus on quality, and documentation.
  • Strong programming and algorithmic skills. Proficiency in a major programming language, e.g. Java, Go, C / C++, Python, etc.
  • Experience configuring and deploying distributed systems and microservices using modern tools, e.g. Kubernetes, Helm, etc.
  • Strong focus on project delivery and communication skills.
  • Experience in driving operational excellence for large, production services.
  • A strong sense of customer centricity, teamwork, technical leadership and mentorship and are excited about team and company success.
  • Education in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
Preferred technical and professional experience
  • Proven track record of delivering large-scale, highly available, low latency, high quality systems.
  • Hands-on technical expertise in large scale systems engineering or distributed 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 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 @ 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

Must have the ability to work in Canada without sponsorship.

This role will involve working with technology that is covered by Export Regulations sanctions. If you are a Foreign National from any of the following US sanctioned countries (Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia regions of Ukraine) on a work permit, you are not eligible for employment in this position.

The salary range for the position is based on a full-time schedule. Your ultimate salary within this range may vary depending on your job-related skills and experience for this position.