Staff Software Engineer I – Control Plane Core Infrastructure

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’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer I to lead the design and delivery of core control-plane infrastructure that powers Confluent Cloud. In this role you will own highly technical projects across multiple services and teams, shaping the architecture and reliability of our cloud platform. You’ll combine deep distributed systems expertise with strong execution and cross‑team leadership, identifying high‑leverage problems and driving them from idea to durable impact. WHAT YOU WILL DO: - Own end‑to‑end architecture and delivery of complex control‑plane systems (APIs, controllers, orchestration workflows, data models) that support Confluent Cloud products. - Lead open‑ended technical initiatives: take ambiguous problems, clarify requirements, define the approach, and drive execution across teams and services. - Raise the bar on reliability and operations by building resilient systems with strong observability, clear SLOs, runbooks, and safe rollout/rollback patterns. - Collaborate across orgs (Cloud Platform, Kafka, Compute, Security, Traffic, SRE and others) to align on designs, trade‑offs, and long‑term platform direction. - Mentor and unblock engineers at multiple levels; provide high‑quality design and code reviews, and help grow the broader engineering team. - Continuously improve developer experience for our control‑plane stack (tooling, automation, CI/CD, test strategy) to remove toil and increase velocity. - Influence technical strategy in your domain: identify high‑impact opportunities, propose roadmaps, and help prioritize work aligned with business goals. - Contribute to engineering culture via documentation, design reviews, and knowledge sharing (internal talks, wikis, or external content where appropriate). WHAT YOU WILL BRING: - Experienced builder: Typically 6+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong track record of delivering complex backend or distributed systems to production. - Distributed systems & cloud expert: Deep hands‑on experience with at least some of: - Distributed systems design (consistency models, failure modes, data modeling, scalability). - Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and cloud‑native architectures. - Kubernetes or similar orchestration platforms. - Strong systems and coding skills: Proficiency in one or more of Go, Java or Scala, and comfort working across services, infrastructure, and automation. - Architect & executor: Able to define end‑to‑end designs, break them into milestones, de‑risk early, and land them on time with high quality. - Operationally rigorous: You think in terms of SLOs, failure modes, observability, and incident response; you design for safe change and graceful degradation. - Great communicator: You write clear design docs, explain trade‑offs crisply, and can lead technical discussions with diverse stakeholders (engineers, PMs, leadership). - Leader without authority: You’ve successfully led cross‑team projects, influenced technical direction beyond your immediate code, and helped others level up. - Values‑aligned: You care about customer impact, reliability, long‑term maintainability, and helping the team win, not just shipping features. WHAT GIVES YOU AN EDGE: - Experience building control‑plane systems (APIs, operators/controllers, metadata services, provisioning/orchestration workflows). - Background with Apache Kafka or other streaming/data systems. - Prior work on multi‑region, high‑availability, or disaster‑recovery architectures. - Experience in security‑sensitive infrastructure (identity, certificates, secrets, mTLS, policy) or compliance‑driven environments. - Contributions to open source projects, public talks, or technical blogs in relevant areas. 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 http://ibm.com/careers/us-en/privacy-policy/.