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 As a Senior Software Development Manager, you will lead a team of engineers building features, enhancing performance, and delivering high-quality Kafka releases for Confluent. You will oversee both technical delivery and people leadership, partnering closely with Architects, Product Managers, and organizational leaders. This role requires technical expertise to guide projects, navigate ambiguity, evaluate requirements, and elevate team performance.

You will define the vision, coach team members, and drive cross-functional efforts to tackle complex distributed systems challenges at scale with foresight, prioritization, and a strong bias for action.

- 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.
- Collaborate & Influence: Work closely with product management, engineering leadership, and stakeholders across Confluent. You will align roadmaps and foster strong partnerships to solve complex challenges that cross organizational boundaries.

Required education

- Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

- Master's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

- 11 years in software development and 2 years in an engineering management role.




- Strong understanding of systems concepts including performance characteristics, features of real-time systems.
- Ability to read and review code and designs in languages commonly used at Confluent (e.g., Java, Go, or similar).
- High judgement on technical directions to take, evaluate the complexity of projects and accurately estimate resources.
- Experience designing and operating resilient systems at scale, in the three major CSPs (AWS, Azure, GCP), with a proven track record of "seeing around corners" to reduce complexity and create critical enduring technical foundations.
- A track record of leading and nurturing high-performance teams, with strong collaboration skills and the ability to execute against complex, cross-functional roadmaps.

Preferred technical and professional experience

- Experience on Apache Kafka.

Years of Experience

- 11 - 18

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT IBM Software infuses core business operations with intelligence-from machine learning to generative AI-to help make organizations more responsive, productive, and resilient. IBM Software helps clients put AI into action now to create real value with trust, speed, and confidence across digital labor, IT automation, application modernization, security, and sustainability. Critical to this is the ability to make use of all data, because AI is only as good as the data that fuels it. In most organizations, data is spread across multiple clouds, on premises, in private datacenters, and at the edge. IBM's AI and data platform scales and accelerates the impact of AI with trusted data, and provides leading capabilities to train, tune and deploy AI across business. IBM's hybrid cloud platform is one of the most comprehensive and consistent approaches to development, security, and operations across hybrid environments-a flexible foundation for leveraging data, wherever it resides, to extend AI deep into a business.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM 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 live 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 every day, all while having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive, whatever their personal or qualified 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 ongoing 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 every day 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?

ABOUT IBM 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.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS When applying to jobs of your interest, we recommend that you do so for those that match your experience and expertise. Our recruiters advise that you apply to not more than 3 roles in a year for the best candidate experience. For additional information about location requirements, please discuss with the recruiter following the submission of your application.

Locations - Bangalore, Karnataka, India

📌 Senior Software Development Manager - Confluent (India)
🏢 IBM
📍 India