Staff Software Engineer - Confluent Kafka Storage
Role Overview
At IBM Software, we build the world’s leading AI-powered, cloud-native products that shape the future of business and society. Our team is composed of passionate distributed systems and infrastructure engineers dedicated to solving some of the hardest problems in cloud computing.
Our Mission
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. Our mission is to deliver bulletproof data durability, high throughput, and ultra-low latency while maximizing multi-tenant efficiency and minimizing the total cost of ownership for enterprise data streams.
Key Responsibilities
Design and develop a highly available, performant, reliable, durable, scalable, and multi-tenant storage engine for Kora.
Set the standard for engineering excellence. 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.
Collaborate with product management, design, and other engineering teams to ensure seamless integration of storage features and infrastructure with the broader organization.
Act as a trusted advisor for both internal and cross-functional teams, providing guidance on complex technical problems and contributing to high-level decision-making processes.
Mentor engineers across the team and help shape the long-term technical direction.
Preferred Education and Technical Expertise
Master's Degree Required
10+ years of relevant backend and/or infrastructure development experience.
BS, MS, or PhD in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
Expertise in Java, Scala, C/C++, Go or other statically typed languages.
Proven experience designing and building large-scale, distributed storage systems.
Deep knowledge of distributed systems concepts, including fault tolerance, consistency, and scalability.
Strong understanding at a systems level (disk, network, operating systems, etc).
Strong leadership skills with a demonstrated ability to mentor and guide engineers to success.
Preferred Technical and Professional Experience
A strong background in distributed storage systems or databases.
Expertise in building and operating modern cloud-based infrastructure and multi-tenant environments.
Experience developing SaaS services on public cloud providers (AWS, Azure or GCP).
Familiarity with or has experience contributing to the following open-source technologies: Apache Kafka, Apache Iceberg, Apache Flink.
Interest in evangelism (giving talks at tech conferences, writing blog posts evangelizing your work).