Senior Engineering Manager

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.

As a senior engineering manager, you will lead a team of engineers building features, enhancing performance and help deliver high quality Kafka releases for Confluent. You will be responsible for both people leadership and technical delivery, partnering closely with Architects, Product and Organization Leaders. 

This role requires technical expertise to guide the projects, able to deal with ambiguity and make the right decisions, grow the team to the next level, have good communication skills, understand the project designs and evaluate the project requirements. 

The role requires the ability to "see around corners" to reduce complexity and build enduring technical foundations.

 A strong bias for action and excellent prioritization skills.

• Drive execution on complex projects, dive deep, make tradeoffs and deliver a delightful experience for our customers. Look ahead and drive the direction of the product working with the Product team.
• Lead & Mentor: Grow, coach, and nurture a high-performance team. You will be responsible for hiring, performance management, and keeping a high bar for talent. Create an environment where engineers can do their best work—through clear expectations, coaching, feedback, and career development.
• Foster Operational Excellence: Champion a strong culture of ownership and continuous improvement. You will lead effective root cause analyses and implement corrective actions to improve the security, reliability, and performance of your services.

• Experience
  • 15+ years of experience in software development, including 5+ years in an Engineering Management role.

  
  

  Technical Expertise
  • Strong understanding of distributed systems concepts, including performance characteristics and real-time system features.
  • Ability to read, review, and provide technical guidance on code and system designs in languages commonly used at Confluent, such as Java, Go, Kotlin, or similar.
  • Demonstrated ability to make high-quality technical decisions, evaluate project complexity, and accurately estimate required resources and timelines.
  • Deep expertise with Apache Kafka and/or other large-scale event-streaming platforms such as Apache Pulsar and Apache Flink, particularly within cloud-based environments.

  
  

  Leadership
  • Proven track record of building, leading, and developing high-performing engineering teams.
  • Strong collaboration and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to drive execution across complex, cross-functional initiatives and roadmaps.
  • Experience fostering a culture of technical excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement.

• Real-Time Streaming Platforms knowledge (Kafka, Pulsar, Flink)
• High Availability, Replication, and Fault-Tolerant Systems

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 IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business. 

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

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