Senior Staff Software Engineer - Confluent Kafka Storage

IBM Software develops AI-powered, cloud-native products and solutions for digital transformation. IBM is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to serve as a technical authority for the Kora Storage team, designing and implementing distributed storage systems while setting technical standards, collaborating across teams, and mentoring engineers.

Responsibilities:

• Storage Engine Development: Design and develop a highly available, performant, reliable, durable, scalable, and multi-tenant storage engine for Kora
• Engineering Leadership: Set the standard for engineering excellence. Be instrumental in driving the technical solutions end-to-end, working closely with the team and key stakeholders to design, architect, and develop top-notch solutions
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate with product management, design, and other engineering teams to ensure seamless integration of storage features and infrastructure with the broader organization. Act as a trusted advisor for both internal and cross-functional teams, providing guidance on complex technical problems and contributing to high-level decision-making processes
• Mentoring: Mentor engineers across the team and help shape the long-term technical direction

Requirements:

• Bachelor's Degree
• 10+ years of relevant backend and/or infrastructure development experience
• BS, MS, or PhD in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience
• Expertise in Java, Scala, C/C++, Go or other statically typed languages
• Proven experience designing and building large-scale, distributed storage systems
• Deep knowledge of distributed systems concepts, including fault tolerance, consistency, and scalability
• Solid understanding at a systems level (disk, network, operating systems, etc)
• Strong leadership skills with a demonstrated ability to mentor and guide engineers to success
• Some travel may be required based on business demand
• Master's Degree
• A strong background in distributed storage systems or databases
• Expertise in building and operating modern cloud-based infrastructure and multi-tenant environments
• Experience developing SaaS services on public cloud providers (AWS, Azure or GCP)
• Familiarity with or has experience contributing to the following open-source technologies: Apache Kafka, Apache Iceberg, Apache Flink
• Interest in evangelism (giving talks at tech conferences, writing blog posts evangelizing your work)