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:

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. Here are examples of some of the challenges we've taken on in recent years:

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

What You Will Do:

Driven and excited about challenges of delivering complex projects in production with a focus on quality
Customer focused - making customers more successful by taking on their most challenging problems motivates you
Have a strong sense of teamwork and able to make decisions which benefit the team and company
Identify root causes, and get beyond treating symptoms - motivated to dig deep and solve hard problems

What You Will Bring:

BS, MS, or PhD in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience
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)
A self starter with the ability to work effectively in teams
Proficiency in Java, Scala, C/C++, Go or other statically typed languages

What Gives You an Edge:

In-depth familiarity with the JVM
A strong background in distributed storage systems or databases
Experience in the areas of resource management and QoS
Experience/knowledge with public clouds (AWS, Azure or GCP)
Interest in evangelism (giving talks at tech conferences, writing blog posts evangelizing Kafka)
Experience working on databases or data storage

Ready to build what's next? Let’s get in motion.

Come As You Are

Belonging isn’t a perk here. It’s the baseline. We work across time zones and backgrounds, knowing the best ideas come from different perspectives. And we make space for everyone to lead, grow, and challenge what’s possible.

We’re proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. Employment decisions are based on job-related criteria, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other classification protected by law.

Privacy Statement

Confluent is an IBM subsidiary which has been acquired by IBM and will be integrated into the IBM organization. By proceeding with this application, you understand that Confluent will share your personal information with other IBM affiliates involved in your recruitment process, wherever these are located. More Information on how IBM protects your personal information, including the safeguards in case of cross-border data transfer, are available here.

Senior Software Engineer II, Kora Compute