Senior Software Engineer - Confluent Cloud Infrastructure & Platform

About the Role

At IBM Software, we address client challenges by creating AI-powered, cloud-native products that drive business and societal transformation globally. Being part of our Software team means engaging in innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning, contributing to cutting-edge technology solutions that impact the world.

Your Responsibilities

• Develop and manage AI-enabled workflows that enhance the software development process, including automated implementation, pull request reviews, documentation generation, testing infrastructure, and CI/CD guardrails.
• Take complete ownership of projects — from identifying problems, designing innovative AI-powered tools, deploying solutions, to monitoring and optimizing their effectiveness over time.
• Build backend services and orchestration layers integrating large language models (LLMs) with developer tools such as GitHub, Jira, Slack, continuous integration systems, and internal platforms.
• Translate complex engineering challenges into actionable products that increase developer productivity and code quality.
• Work closely with platform and infrastructure teams to embed AI workflows into runtime environments, managed workloads, and deployment pipelines.
• Implement stringent safety measures and governance frameworks, including access control, policy enforcement, and comprehensive observability.
• Use quantitative metrics like adoption rates, reliability, and cost efficiency to drive iterative product improvements.
• Maintain high-quality engineering standards through clean, rigorously tested code and thorough design reviews.

Preferred Education

Master’s degree preferred.

Required Skills and Qualifications

• Experienced in developing and operating backend production systems.
• Proficient and expert in Golang, especially in creating paved paths.
• Background in building internal developer-facing platforms or automating workflows.
• Practical knowledge of applying large language model techniques to software engineering processes, creating dependable systems beyond basic prompting.
• Familiarity with cloud-native infrastructure technologies, including containerization and Kubernetes.
• Strong judgment regarding software quality, testing approaches, and operational safeguards.
• User-focused product mindset emphasizing adoption, efficiency, and quality enhancements.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to collaborate effectively across diverse teams.

Preferred Experience

• Hands-on experience designing AI-enhanced workflows for tasks such as code review, automated test generation, incident management, or developer onboarding.
• Proficiency in at least one major programming language such as Java, Go, or Python.
• Experience integrating developer tools like source control systems, continuous integration, issue trackers, chats, and internal portals.
• Understanding of foundational platform components like service runtimes, progressive delivery mechanisms, and configuration management.
• Expertise in distributed systems, developer productivity platforms, or infrastructure-intensive contexts.
• Ability to craft opinionated paved paths and governance models to standardize workflows.