Manager II, Engineering - Confluent

Introduction

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.

Your Role And Responsibilities

About the Role

The Connect Cloud Platform team owns the control plane that powers every connector running in Confluent Cloud, giving customers a reliable way to create, configure, and manage their connectors. The team also owns hybrid connector management, which extends this control plane so customers can manage on prem Connect clusters from Confluent Cloud through a single pane of glass, and contributes to the ongoing architectural evolution of the control plane as Connect scales.

As an Engineering Manager II, you will own a team of senior and junior engineers building this control plane. Correctness is paramount in this domain: the team is accountable for making sure every connector request is processed reliably and that customer intent is honored consistently, given the cost and compliance implications of getting it wrong. You will partner closely with product, peer engineering teams across Confluent Cloud and Confluent Platform, and adjacent platform teams, to turn customer and product needs into a clear roadmap and a team that executes against it with a high bar for operational excellence.

What You Will Do

• Own execution for the Connect control plane, including connector lifecycle APIs and the underlying metadata and state management, while partnering on the hybrid connector management initiative that extends this ownership.
• Partner with product management, engineering leadership, and cross functional stakeholders to define quarterly milestones and drive delivery of multi quarter roadmap commitments.
• Break down complex, cross team initiatives into meaningful milestones, surface dependencies and blockers early, and keep execution aligned to business priorities as requirements evolve.
• Lead a team of both senior and junior engineers, creating clarity on goals, providing regular coaching and feedback, and helping individuals grow in line with the career progression guide.
• Own the health of the team's on call and operational practices, including incident response, root cause reviews, and reducing recurring operational toil, given the team sits directly in the path of every connector operation customers run.
• Represent the team in technical discussions, design reviews, and postmortems, and help raise the bar for architecture, execution, and engineering process across the broader Connect organization.
• Translate product asks and customer needs into engineering requirements and delivery plans that balance feature velocity, technical debt, reliability, and long term architectural integrity.
• Build a healthy, inclusive, high trust team culture with psychological safety, strong engagement, and clear accountability.
• Partner with recruiting to attract, assess, and close strong engineering talent, while maintaining a high hiring bar and a strong candidate experience.
  
  

Preferred Education

Master's Degree

Required Technical And Professional Expertise

• 8+ years of relevant software engineering experience and 2+ years of people management experience leading engineers in distributed systems, platform, or infrastructure focused teams.
• Strong technical depth in distributed systems, with the ability to weigh in credibly on API design, data consistency, and operational trade offs.
• Experience delivering multi quarter or cross team initiatives with clear business impact, including managing dependencies, shifting priorities, and execution risk.
• Proven ability to lead through ambiguity, align teams around outcomes, and keep work moving even while strategy is still being refined.
• Demonstrated strength in coaching, feedback, performance management, and career development for engineers across different levels of seniority.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively across engineering, product, and other cross functional partners.
• Experience hiring and building balanced, high performing teams with strong attention to inclusion, team health, and long term talent development.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
  
  

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

• Experience with Apache Kafka, Kafka Connect, Confluent Platform, or adjacent streaming and data integration technologies.
• Experience owning control plane or management plane systems, including REST APIs and state management for distributed resources.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, cloud native platforms, and hybrid deployment models spanning on prem and cloud, across AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Experience leading teams responsible for correctness critical, customer facing platform experiences, where request loss or state drift has direct customer and cost impact.
• Experience balancing roadmap delivery with reliability, on call health, and operational excellence in a business critical, customer facing system.