IBM
Senior Software Engineer - Confluent

How your CV stacks up
Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role
?%
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:
As a Software Engineer, Cloud Control Plane, you will be designing and implementing a distributed control plane used by product teams to manage the lifecycle of their Confluent Cloud offerings.
Reasons to use Rodeo
I’m in my final year doing Economics and I don’t know whether to apply for grad schemes now or do a masters first. What do you think?
Honest answer — it depends on where you want to end up. A lot of top grad schemes (Big 4, civil service, banking) don’t need a masters. Let’s look at the ones you’d be competitive for now, and we can decide if a masters actually adds anything.
Also worth knowing: most autumn 2026 applications are open now. Timing matters more than you think.
Start with a chat, not a search bar
Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.
Graduate Consultant — 2026 Scheme
Why you're a good match
StrongYour economics background and your summer at a regional bank line up with what PwC looks for on the consulting scheme. Applications close in four weeks.
See breakdownIt searches the market for you
Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.
Why you're a good match
You’ve got the grades and the economics background, and your bank internship is exactly the experience this scheme looks for. Apply soon — deadlines close within the month.
Experience fit
Your summer at the bank plus your econometrics coursework map directly to the day-one responsibilities on this scheme — client modelling, market briefings, and deal support.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
We are a tightly knit group with a fairly mature Agile process running a very mild version of the XP playbook - we care a lot about clear communication, a good degree of task breakdown and a whole lot of pairing with other engineers. We pride ourselves in how we get stuff done - our process is light on red tape and heavy on collaboration - we will give you the authority and autonomy to make decisions.
What You Will Do
- Delve deep into the Kubernetes framework - we have K8S contributors working with us internally
- Provision infrastructure using a mixture of Terraform and internal tooling and deploy your changes using Helm
- Thrive working iteratively in a fast-paced Scrum environment where you'll use our product and be very much DevOps driven
- You'll be expected to not only ship code but also operate and support it before and after release - that includes having a deep understanding of what your code will run on


Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
Preferred Education
None
Required Technical And Professional Expertise
- Strong software design and implementation skills in building infrastructure frameworks
- Deep expertise in building distributed systems
- Experience with one or more of these programming languages - Go, C++, Java, or Python
- Experience in a full project lifecycle starting from zero lines of code to operating, observing and supporting a product as part of an on-call rota
- Solid understanding of Kubernetes and Docker
Preferred Technical And Professional Experience
- Experience in building control planes (virtualization, software-defined networking/storage)
- Experience building APIs - both RESTful and gRPC-based
- Familiarity with infra such as networking, storage, and security in data centres
- Hands-on experience with Kubernetes operators, Helm, or StatefulSets
- Open source contributions to Kubernetes sigs or adjacent projects
- Experience with PBT, TDD, and pair programming.
“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Jessica, London
Skills