confluent - Manager II, Engineering – Secure Compute Platform

• Lead the strategic vision and multi-year roadmap for the Secure Compute Platform, aligning foundational infrastructure with company growth goals. • Provide hands-on technical leadership in distributed systems, Kubernetes, and container-based runtimes to ensure world-class security and scale. • Partner with Product, Security, and Cloud Infrastructure teams to define architectural standards and deliver seamless, end-to-end solutions. • Cultivate a culture of technical excellence and ownership within a high-performing and inclusive engineering team. Lead, mentor, and scale a team of 6-8 engineers. • Drive the exploration and adoption of AI-driven tools and workflows to accelerate team velocity and enhance operational efficiency. • Own the execution of critical platform building blocks—including isolation, identity, and networking—to meet the needs of a global, multi-tenant customer base. • Champion operational hygiene and observability, maintaining high standards for reliability and performance across thousands of global clusters. • Influence overall domain health by driving platform adoption and ensuring secure compute interfaces meet the needs of developer-centric users. • 10+ years of experience in software development and 3+ years in management. • Experience in building and designing resilient systems at scale using hyperscale CSPs (AWS, Azure, GCP), with a proven track record of “seeing around corners” to reduce complexity and create critical enduring technical foundations. • Demonstrated expertise in building and scaling secure, high-performance distributed systems, with deep technical proficiency in Kubernetes, container internals, and lower-level systems. • Understanding API governance frameworks and best practices for ensuring API consistency, security, and reliability. • Ability to influence the team, peers, and upper management using effective communication and collaborative techniques. • Ability to hire while ensuring a high hiring bar, motivate engineers, coach/mentor, and manage performance. • An excellent track record of timely shipping features, a sense of urgency, an aggressive mindset toward achieving results, and excellent prioritization skills. • Bachelor’s or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience • WHAT GIVES YOU AN EDGE: • Proven track record in contributing to or maintaining foundational open-source projects within the cloud-native or distributed systems ecosystem (e.g., CNCF, Kubernetes). • Demonstrated ability to build and foster a strong engineering community while driving the adoption of innovative platform technologies, such as AI-driven infrastructure automation. • READY TO BUILD WHAT'S NEXT? LET’S GET IN MOTION. • COME AS YOU ARE • Belonging isn’t a perk here. It’s the baseline. We work across time zones and backgrounds, knowing the best ideas come from different perspectives. And we make space for everyone to lead, grow, and challenge what’s possible.