Senior Engineer Manager - Confluent Experience Foundations

Job description

from IBM careers

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. With Confluent, data doesn’t sit still. We put information in motion, streaming in near real time so organizations can react faster, build smarter, and deliver experiences as dynamic as the world around them.

Your role and responsibilities

About the Role:

 We're seeking a hands-on Full stack Senior Engineering Manager to join our Experience Foundations team. This team owns critical TEAR (Trusted Experiences Access & Revenue) domains including Security UI, Networking UI, and Billing UI, as well as the shared experience foundations infrastructure (formerly UIF/UI Foundations team).

 You'll lead the evolution of our foundations infrastructure from UI-only support to serving the entire Experience organization which includes several other interfaces (API/CLI/TF/VSCode/MCP). Along with this you will help establish patterns and best practices that enable UI engineers to confidently develop security and networking features across our application portfolio—including Governance, Flink, Kafka, Connect, and Tableflow.

 In this role, you'll also support the evolution of Networking, Security, and Billing UI experiences, especially as we adopt and integrate the latest and greatest technologies in these domains. As cloud providers introduce new networking capabilities, security standards evolve, and billing models become more sophisticated, you'll ensure our UI stays at the forefront—providing intuitive, scalable interfaces that make complex technical capabilities accessible to our customers.

 The Experience Foundations team owns several critical pillars:

• Security: User authentication, authorization, and security experiences (RBAC, BYOK, SSO, API keys, encryption management)

• Networking: Network configuration and connectivity interfaces (private networking, VPC peering, PrivateLink across AWS, GCP, Azure)

• Billing UI: Revenue-critical billing and payment experiences (subscription models, multi-month commits, promotional offers, chargebacks, usage tracking

• Experience Foundations Infrastructure: Shared UI/UX infrastructure and tooling (formerly UIF/UI Foundations), this includes our design system, compliance support, experience performance, accessibility and more.

• Track record of elevating team capabilities through mentorship and knowledge sharing

• Demonstrated success partnering with Product and Design to drive execution

• Experience managing or collaborating closely with other engineering managers

• Strong communication skills and ability to influence across organizational boundaries

• Experience managing multiple product areas or technical domains simultaneously

 These capabilities sit at the intersection of trust, infrastructure control, and revenue generation—foundational pillars that support our entire application ecosystem across Governance, Flink, Kafka, Connect, Tableflow, and future products.

 What You Will Do:

 Technical Leadership & Engineering Excellence

• Establish clear, reusable patterns and best practices for UI engineers developing security and networking code

• Elevate the impact of all UI engineers across multiple product teams (Governance, Flink, Kafka, Connect, Tableflow)

• Take a depth-first, hands-on approach to understanding systems and unblocking teams

• Go deep in domain areas—understand the technical intricacies of networking protocols, security models, and billing systems to make sound architectural decisions

• Drive the evolution of Experience Foundations infrastructure from UI-only to supporting the entire Experience organization, partner with the existing Engineering Manager to shape and execute the foundations roadmap

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Own PM and Design partnerships for Security, Networking, and Billing domains

• Ensure smooth execution and delivery of product initiatives across these verticals

• Bridge technical and product perspectives to drive aligned outcomes

• Translate domain complexity into clear execution plans

• Challenge product specs when necessary to ensure technical feasibility

• Partner with product teams across the portfolio to ensure patterns meet their needs

• Communicate progress, risks, and trade-offs transparently to senior leadership

Team & People Management

• Collaborate with existing engineering leadership to build cohesive team strategy, including existing manager in the foundations space as your direct report

• Mentor and develop engineers across multiple disciplines and experience levels

• Foster a culture of ownership, excellence, and continuous improvement

• Create leverage by empowering engineers with patterns, tools, and knowledge

• Build strong connections between Experience Foundations and application teams

• Champion developer productivity through AI tooling adoption, test automation, and improved engineering processes

Your work will enable UX engineers across our entire application portfolio to build consistent, high-quality security and networking experiences. By establishing clear patterns and evolving our foundations infrastructure, you'll multiply the impact of every engineer working on Governance, Flink, Kafka, Connect, Tableflow, and future products—while supporting the foundational pillars that drive over 70% of Confluent's revenue.

 If you're energized by the challenge of transforming foundations infrastructure while elevating engineering capabilities across critical product domains, we'd love to talk.

Required technical and professional expertise

What You Will Bring:

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with 4+ years in engineering management

• Strong hands-on technical background with ability to dive deep into complex systems

• Deep frontend engineering expertise: Strong understanding of modern web development (React, TypeScript, component design systems)

• Proven ability to distill complex technical domains into clear patterns and best practices

• Experience creating reusable patterns/frameworks adopted across multiple teams or products

Preferred technical and professional experience

What Gives You an Edge:

• Experience managing managers or leading leaders

• Domain knowledge in at least one TEAR area: Security (RBAC, SSO, BYOK, encryption), Networking (VPC, PrivateLink, routing), or Billing/Payments (subscription models, usage tracking)

• Experience evolving platform teams to serve broader organizational needs

• Proficient with or highly curious about AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, etc.)

• Track record of driving developer productivity improvements through tooling, automation, or process innovation