Senior Software Engineer - Confluent Hybrid Enterprise Connect

IBM
IBM

Software Engineering

United States · Richland, WA, USA · Kennewick, WA, USA · Pasco, WA, USA · West Richland, WA, USA

Posted on Jul 31, 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.

Your role and responsibilities

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.

About The Role

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will contribute to several key initiatives for the Connect Platform Team at Confluent. The Connect Platform team's mission is to design, build, and operate critical components that bridge Apache Kafka with the wider ecosystem - making it seamless, secure, and scalable for enterprises to move data between Kafka and external systems, both on-premises and in Confluent Cloud. The team is responsible for both self-managed (on-prem) and fully managed (cloud) connectors, ensuring organizations can confidently integrate, govern, and manage streaming data flows to power event-driven architectures.

Confluent Connect is the industry-standard integration and ingestion framework for Kafka, enabling organizations to stream data between Kafka and hundreds of external systems (databases, SaaS, storage, legacy apps).

The Team Delivers Key Primitives Such As

  • Single Message Transforms (SMTs)
  • Authentication, security, tenant isolation, role-based access, and network controls
  • Support for both self-managed and fully managed connectors

What You Will Do

  • Work with distributed systems, cloud-native development, and secure, scalable data integration
  • Architect a complex engineering system from end to end
  • Partner across engineering and other key stakeholders to create and execute the overall roadmap for delivering a top-notch Data Streaming Platform for our customers
  • Evaluate and enhance the efficiency of our platform's technology stack, keeping pace with industry trends and adopting state-of-the-art solutions
  • Solve complicated technical projects with high quality and provide technical guidance to the team in specialized areas
  • Enhance the stability, performance, scalability, and operational excellence across multiple critical systems
Required education
Bachelor's Degree
Preferred education
Master's Degree
Required technical and professional expertise
  • 7+ years of relevant software development experience
  • Proven track record of leading the delivery of large-scale, secure, highly available, low latency, high quality systems
  • Deep hands-on technical expertise in hyper-scale distributed systems engineering
  • Experience running production services in the cloud and being part of on call rotation
  • Expertise in cloud-native technology, including networking & security
  • Experience with Java, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms is highly valued
  • Strong collaboration skills and a growth mindset are essential, given the team's cross-functional nature and focus on mentorship and operational excellence
  • Prior experience working on AWS, GCP, or Azure and a deep understanding of cloud best practices
  • Ability to influence the team, peers, and management using effective communication and collaborative techniques
  • Proven experience in leading and mentoring technical teams
  • Drive results by removing friction and improving the development stack with urgency and prioritization skills
  • BS Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience. An advanced degree in computer science is preferred
Preferred technical and professional experience

• Leading-Edge Technologies: Experience with designing, developing, and delivering software solutions using leading-edge technologies, including back-end and front-end development, and DevOps engineering.

• Agile Collaboration: Experience working in an Agile environment, collaborating with stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver high-quality software solutions.

• Automated CI/CD Pipelines: Experience contributing to automated CI/CD pipelines, ensuring seamless integration and delivery of software solutions.

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.

See more open positions at IBM