Staff Software Engineer II - Confluent

IntroductionAt 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 Your role and responsibilities We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer with strong Rust experience to work on complex backend, infrastructure and distributed systems. In this role, you will work closely with senior engineers and technical leaders to design and build highly scalable, reliable and high-performance software. You will contribute to architectural decisions, drive technical improvements and help evolve systems across multiple components. The role requires strong experience with Rust programming, distributed systems and large-scale software engineering. Experience with Apache Kafka, streaming, messaging or similar infrastructure technologies is highly valuable, but is not required if you have a strong background in complex systems engineering.

What You Will Do

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will be a technical leader whose work significantly impacts the product, engineering organization, and customer success. * Drive complex technical projects that require strong software engineering skills, architectural judgement and the ability to work effectively with ambiguity. * Design and develop high-performance systems in Rust, focusing on scalability, reliability, maintainability and operational excellence.

• Provide technical leadership across teams, set technical direction and influence architecture and engineering decisions. * Be a force multiplier by mentoring senior engineers and helping the team improve engineering practices, design principles and software architecture. * Insist on high standards for software quality, performance, reliability and maintainability.

• Collaborate across teams with engineering, product management and other stakeholders to understand requirements and translate them into robust technical solutions. * Drive operational excellence through reliability improvements, performance optimization, observability and supportability. * Contribute to technical design and architecture discussions, clearly communicating complex technical concepts and trade-offs.

• Contribute to open source projects and communities where relevant, including Apache Kafka or other distributed systems projects. Required technical and professional expertise Experience: * Strong professional experience developing production software using Rust. * Track record of delivering complex systems projects with large scope, including multi-quarter design and development initiatives.

• Strong experience with distributed systems, backend infrastructure, cloud platforms, networking, storage, databases or other large-scale systems. * 4+ years driving Staff-level or equivalent technical initiatives across multiple teams, systems or components. * Experience designing and implementing scalable, reliable and high-performance software systems.

• Strong understanding of software architecture, system design and engineering best practices. Leadership & Influence: * Demonstrated ability to lead through ambiguity, set technical direction and align multiple teams around complex technical plans. * Track record of mentoring senior engineers and enabling others to deliver on high-risk, high-impact projects.

• Clear, concise technical communication, both written and verbal. * Ability to influence technical decisions beyond your immediate team and drive engineering standards across the organization. Preferred technical and professional experience * Experience with Apache Kafka, streaming platforms, messaging systems or other distributed data systems.

• Prior experience contributing to open source projects, particularly systems software or infrastructure projects. * Experience with cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, networking, storage or database technologies. * Experience with performance optimization, observability, reliability engineering and large-scale production systems.

• Prior experience as a committer, maintainer or core contributor to an open source project. IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and 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, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics.

IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.