Software Engineer - Confluent Secure Compute

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.

About the Role:

The Secure Compute team builds and operates the foundational infrastructure layer that powers Confluent Cloud. Our mission is to enable the safe execution of code and data processing in multi-tenant environments across AWS, Azure, and GCP  provide the essential building blocks—including isolation, identity, and networking—that empower both our customers and internal product teams to innovate without compromising security.

As Confluent’s product portfolio expands, our team sits at the center of the company's growth. We own a polyglot, container-based runtime that operates across thousands of clusters globally, solving some of the most complex challenges in distributed systems and cloud-native architecture. By balancing world‑class security with operational cost‑efficiency, we ensure that Confluent Cloud remains the trusted platform for mission‑critical workloads in even the most highly regulated industries.

What You Will Do:

• Build mission‑critical backend services and features that deliver value to our customers. You will play a crucial role in architecting, designing, developing and operationalizing high performance, scalable, reliable and resilient services
• Troubleshoot and debug technical issues inside a deep and complex technical stack that includes microservices, containers, and virtualization
• Ensure operational readiness of the services and meet the availability and performance SLA commitments to our customers
• A strategic engineer who constantly thinks of process and operational improvements

Bachelor's Degree

Master's Degree

• 1+ years industry experience designing, building, and supporting backend systems in production with a solid grasp on good software engineering practices such as code reviews, deep focus on quality, and documentation
• Direct experience building systems with online components that serve user request.
• Proficiency in Python runtime environments (virtual environments, package management, and interpreter configurations).
• Strong programming and algorithmic skills. Proficiency in a major programming language, e.g. Java, Go, C / C++, Rust, Python, etc.
• Experience with Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies.
• Experience in other Language Runtimes / VMs (JVM/WASM, etc.) a big plus.
• BS, MS, or PhD in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience

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…