Senior Software Engineer, Confluent
Cloud Compute Platform
$197.4-232k
+ Equity
Data streaming platform
Be an early applicant
Data streaming platform
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$197.4-232k
+ Equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
To help every organization harness data in motion so they can compete and thrive in the modern world.
Role
Who you are
- 8+ years of experience delivering scalable software solutions
- Proven track record of leading the delivery of large-scale, highly available, low-latency systems
- Deep expertise in Kubernetes including controller development, operator patterns, and multi-cluster architectures
- Strong proficiency in Go with experience building production-grade distributed systems
- Experience with multi-tenant platform architectures and security isolation patterns
- Familiarity with gRPC, Protobuf, and API design for internal platform services
- Experience with observability tools and operational excellence practices
- Experience with multi-cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure) and cloud-provider integrations
- Track record of providing technical leadership and mentorship
- Track record of working collaboratively across teams including product management, SRE, and other engineering teams
- A smart, humble, and empathetic attitude with a strong sense of teamwork
- Drive and excitement about the challenges of a fast-paced, innovative software environment
What the job involves
- As a Software Engineer on the Compute Platform team, you will be a key technical leader in building and evolving our next-generation, multi-tenant, cloud-native compute substrate that powers all of Confluent Cloud's diverse workloads
- Our platform orchestrates workloads across thousands of Kubernetes clusters globally across all cloud service providers, providing a unified abstraction layer for scheduling, lifecycle management, and operational excellence
- You'll work on critical systems including:
- Multi-Cluster Workload Orchestration: Build the control plane that manages workload placement, lifecycle, and state across multiple Kubernetes clusters per region
- Platform APIs & Abstractions: Design and evolve APIs that provide clean abstractions for polyglot workload management across diverse compute needs
- Cloud Platform Integration: Build and optimize deep integrations with the broader Confluent Cloud platform for seamless end-to-end operations
- Multi-Tenancy & Security: Implement and enhance workload isolation, network policies, and secure execution environments
- Observability & Operations: Drive operational excellence through monitoring integration, automated health checks, and self-healing capabilities
- As a senior technical leader, you think strategically and help drive end-to-end technical delivery from customer experience to scaling internal operations
- You leverage your expertise in cloud-native distributed systems to take our platform to the next level while ensuring high availability, reliability, and security for our largest enterprise customers
- Drive the overall technical charter for the Compute Platform, including multi-cluster orchestration, workload placement, and security architecture
- Design and implement platform APIs and Kubernetes operators using Go to support evolving workload requirements
- Work closely with product management and engineering leadership to build and drive the roadmap for Confluent's Compute Platform, enabling new business opportunities across Confluent
- Deliver high-impact initiatives in areas such as workload scheduling, disruption management, network isolation, rolling update strategies, and cross-cluster resource management
- Lead technical design reviews and drive architectural decisions across organizational boundaries
- Mentor and grow other engineers on the team through code reviews, pairing, and technical guidance
- Own operational aspects including availability, reliability, performance monitoring, emergency response, and disaster recovery for our global compute infrastructure
Our take
Confluent is a commercial company built on top of the open-source Apache Kafka project. Confluent and Kafka have developed a streaming data technology that processes massive amounts of information in real-time. The streaming database technology was developed at LinkedIn as a way of moving massive amounts of messages. The company decided to open-source that tech in 2011, and Confluent launched as the commercial arm in 2014.
While the base open-source component remains available for free download, it doesn’t include the additional tooling the company has built to make it easier for enterprises to use Kafka. Confluent's value add is in those additional tools, including a cloud version of the product and a marketplace for sharing extensions to the platform.
Confluent expanded strategic partnerships with Microsoft and acquired Immerok, and in 2023 expanded its cloud platform. 2024 saw further product expansions with the launch of the Confluent Migration Accelerator, all exemplifying how the company is living up to its name by rocket-boosting the benefits of Apache Kafka integration for companies.
Now, it looks like IBM is eyeing the company for acquisition and Confluent looks to be a natural fit. Long positioned as the real-time backbone behind modern application, Confluent would gain global scale and an even deeper enterprise reach under iBM, while cementing its role at the center of AI-driven architectures. For COnfluent, the deal would marka shift from fast-growing independent disruptor to foundational infrastructure player powering the next wave of enterprise AI.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Apr 2020
$250m
SERIES E
Jan 2019
$125m
SERIES D
Total funding: $455.9m
Company HQ
Old Mountain View, Mountain View, CA
Leadership
Jay Kreps
(Co-Founder & CEO)Prior to co-founding Confluent in 2014, Jay spent 7 years at LinkedIn, holding various roles including Principal Engineer and Principal Staff Engineer.
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