Sr. Technical Support Engineer - 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

Senior Technical Support Engineers work directly with customers to diagnose and resolve complex Apache Kafka and Confluent Platform issues. They manage high-priority production cases, lead difficult escalations, build customer trust, and collaborate with Engineering, Product, and other internal teams

What You’ll Do

In this role you will:

● Own and manage complex customer cases across production and non-production environments. ● Lead investigations for critical escalations and high-severity incidents. ● Troubleshoot distributed systems, Kafka, Confluent Platform, customer applications, and integrations. ● Define and manage resolution plans, including priorities, dependencies, risks, mitigations, and timelines. ● Communicate clearly with customers and set expectations during high-pressure situations. ● Collaborate with Engineering and Product to identify bugs, improve product quality, and provide field feedback. ● Create and review technical documentation, knowledge articles, and training material. ● Mentor and coach other TSEs and provide technical guidance across the team. ● Contribute to process, tooling, workflow, and supportability improvements. ● Participate in on-call and emergency-response activities as required. 

Required education Bachelor's Degree Preferred education Master's Degree Required technical and professional expertise

● At least 10 years' recent experience in software development, technical support, site reliability engineering or a similar technical role. ● Deep troubleshooting skills across distributed systems and infrastructure. ● Practical knowledge of Apache Kafka, Confluent Platform, Linux, networking, cloud platforms, and relevant programming or scripting languages. ● Ability to analyse logs, metrics, configurations, source code, and customer environments. ● Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly. ● Demonstrated customer empathy, incident ownership, and ability to remain effective under pressure. ● Provide technical leadership during complex customer engagements, acting as a recognised subject matter expert across the organisation ● Ability to work independently on ambiguous and technically complex problems.

Preferred technical and professional experience

● Apache Kafka or other distributed messaging technologies. ● Java development. ● Public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure or Google Cloud). ● Kubernetes, Docker or containerised environments. ● Linux system administration. ● Networking fundamentals (DNS, TLS, load balancing, firewalls). ● CI/CD pipelines and software development lifecycle practices. ● SQL, data analysis or scripting (Python, Bash or similar). ● Observability platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana or OpenTelemetry. ● Experience using AI-assisted tools to improve troubleshooting, automation and knowledge management. 

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 approach 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, lives 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 everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional 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 on-going 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 everyday 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

For additional information about location requirements, please discuss with the recruiter following submission of your application.

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