[Confluent] Senior Software Engineer II - Kafka

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 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.

About the role

We are a team of passionate engineers who love solving complex distributed systems and infrastructure problems. We are building Kora from the ground up to be a true managed service for clients who demand high levels of availability and performance at the lowest cost of ownership. In this role, you will be working on building highly available, reliable, secure, scalable, and multi-tenant Kora's compute layer. You will be instrumental in driving the technical solutions end-to-end, working closely with the team and key stakeholders to design, architect, and develop top-notch solutions.

Examples of challenges we've tackled recently:

• Kora: A Cloud-Native Event Streaming Platform For Kafka
• Apache Kafka's Next-Gen Rebalance Protocol: Towards More Stable and Scalable Consumer Groups
• From On-Prem to Cloud-Native: Multi-Tenancy in Confluent Cloud
• Speed, Scale, Storage: Our Journey from Apache Kafka to Performance in Confluent Cloud
• Benchmarking Confluent Cloud

Responsibilities

• Deliver complex projects in production with a focus on quality
• Solve customer challenges to make them more successful
• Collaborate with the team to make decisions that benefit the team and company
• Identify root causes and solve hard problems beyond treating symptoms

Requirements

• BS, MS, or PhD in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience
• Proficiency in Java, Scala, C/C++, Go, or other statically typed languages
• 4+ years of relevant cloud infrastructure/cloud networking experience
• Strong fundamentals in distributed systems design and development
• Experience building and operating large-scale systems in the Cloud
• Solid understanding of basic systems operations (disk, network, operating systems, etc.)

Qualifications

• In-depth familiarity with the JVM
• Strong background in distributed storage systems or databases
• Experience in resource management and QoS
• Experience/knowledge with public clouds (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
• Interest in evangelism (giving talks at tech conferences, writing blog posts about Kafka)
• Experience working on databases or data storage
• Master's Degree (preferred)

Skills

• Designing, developing, and delivering software solutions using leading-edge technologies (back-end, front-end, DevOps)
• Working in an Agile environment and collaborating with stakeholders
• Contributing to automated CI/CD pipelines