[Remote] Staff Software Engineer II - Confluent Secure Compute

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. IBM Software is dedicated to transforming client challenges into innovative solutions through AI-powered, cloud-native products. The Staff Software Engineer II will lead the development of a multi-tenant, cloud-native compute platform, focusing on secure execution and operational excellence in a distributed systems environment.ResponsibilitiesBuild and evolve the secure, multi-tenant compute substrate and isolation primitives that safely execute customer and internal workloads in a shared environmentDesign and evolve APIs that provide clear, safe abstractions for polyglot workloads (containers, functions, and services) with diverse performance and isolation needsIntegrate the Secure Compute platform with core data and application services so that teams can onboard new workloads with minimal frictionImplement and harden workload isolation, network policies, identity and access, and secure execution environments required to safely run customer-supplied codeDrive operational excellence through rich observability, automated health checks, self-healing workflows, and robust rollout and rollback practicesDefine and drive the technical direction for Secure Compute, including platform architecture, runtime, and security for running trusted and untrusted workloads at scaleDesign and implement platform APIs and Kubernetes controllers/operators (primarily in Go) that power workload lifecycle, autoscaling, placement, and isolation for containers and serverless-style functionsPartner with product and platform teams to shape and deliver the roadmap for Secure Compute, enabling new customer-facing features and internal platforms to build on a common compute substrateDeliver high-impact initiatives in areas such as workload scheduling, failure and disruption handling, private and public networking patterns, rollout strategies, and fleet-level resource managementLead technical design reviews and influence architecture across teams, ensuring Secure Compute primitives are easy to adopt, safe by default, and aligned with broader platform strategyMentor and grow engineers on the team through design guidance, code reviews, pair programming, and sharing best practices for secure, reliable, operable platform developmentOwn operational excellence for key Secure Compute services, including availability, reliability, SLOs, performance, on-call response, incident management, and disaster recoverySkills10+ years of experience delivering scalable backend or infrastructure software in productionProven track record of leading the delivery of large-scale, highly available, low-latency distributed systemsDeep expertise in Kubernetes, including controller development, operator patterns, and preferably multi-region or multi-cluster architecturesStrong proficiency in Go with experience building production-grade services and control planesExperience with multi-tenant platform architectures and security/isolation patterns (for example, namespaces, network policies, sandboxing, secrets and identity management), plus hands-on work with secure container runtimes and low-level Linux internals (for example, Kata Containers, Cloud Hypervisor, cgroups, namespaces, seccomp) and performance troubleshooting and tuning for containerized/virtualized workloadsFamiliarity with gRPC, Protobuf, and internal platform API design for service-to-service communicationHands-on experience with observability and operational practices (metrics, logs, traces, alerting, SLOs, rollout strategies, incident response)Experience with public cloud environments (such as AWS, GCP, Azure) and cloud‑provider integrationsDemonstrated technical leadership and mentorship, including driving cross‑team alignment on architecture and executionMaster's DegreeStrong collaboration skills and history of working effectively with product, SRE/operations, security, and peer engineering teamsA smart, humble, and empathetic attitude with a strong sense of ownership and teamworkDrive and excitement about building foundational cloud infrastructure in a fast‑paced, innovative environmentCompany OverviewIBM provides technology and consulting, including software, infrastructure systems, and cloud-based solutions. It was founded in 1911, and is headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA, with a workforce of 10001+ employees. Its website is http://www.ibm.com.Company H1B SponsorshipIBM has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships, with 279 in 2026, 2993 in 2025, 3258 in 2024, 2139 in 2023, 1807 in 2022, 1156 in 2021, 2669 in 2020. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role.