Software Engineer - Confluent Stream Processing & Analystics

Location: Hampshire

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. 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.

Your role and responsibilities

* Strong coding fundamentals:
Proficient in at least one programming language with solid understanding of data structures, algorithms, and time/space complexity.

* Problem-solving ability:
Can independently solve medium-complexity coding problems, debug issues, and break down ambiguous requirements into actionable tasks.

* Clean engineering practices:
Writes readable, maintainable code, uses Git effectively, and follows code review and testing best practices.

* Backend/API and database basics:
Understands REST APIs, HTTP fundamentals, SQL, and basic system design concepts such as client-server architecture and caching.

* Ownership and learning mindset:
Takes initiative, seeks feedback, learns quickly, and can deliver assigned tasks with minimal supervision.

* Strong communication and collaboration:
Communicates progress, asks thoughtful questions when blocked, and works effectively within an agile team.

Required education

None

Preferred education

Bachelor's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

Hands-on software development experience (new grads welcome)

Solid fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, concurrency, networking, and operating systems

Ability to write clean, maintainable, well-tested code in at least one modern language (Java, Go, or similar)

Curiosity about distributed systems and how large-scale services like Kafka are designed and operated

A self-starter mindset - comfortable asking questions, seeking feedback, and iterating based on code review

Strong communication skills and willingness to collaborate closely with a small team

Preferred technical and professional experience

Coursework or projects involving Apache Kafka, distributed systems, or cloud infrastructure

Exposure to Kubernetes, Docker, or cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure)

Contributions to open-source projects.

- Interest in observability or platform engineering

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…