Software Developer II -

About The Company

At IBM Software, we transform client challenges into solutions through AI-powered, cloud-native products that help shape the future of business and society. Our legacy of innovation creates opportunities for IBMers to learn, grow, and contribute to meaningful work on a global scale. Teams across IBM Software bring together diverse perspectives, technologies, partners, and industries to design, develop, and deliver products that support digital transformation.

IBM’s culture is built around curiosity, collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning. As part of IBM Software, you will work in a product and technology environment where thoughtful problem-solving and strong engineering practices help create solutions for customers around the world.

About The Role

IBM is seeking a Senior Software Engineer II to help build and evolve foundational backend systems for a cloud-based data streaming platform. In this role, you will take ownership of critical distributed services and contribute to a highly available, scalable metadata platform that serves as a source of truth for services across the cloud environment.

The platform provides low-latency read and write APIs and streams data in real time. It is part of a broader effort to create a shared, self-service foundation that can replace bespoke data stores with common platform capabilities. You will collaborate with engineers and partners to solve challenging distributed-systems problems and deliver secure, reliable services that operate across regions, clouds, and interconnected systems.

Qualifications

Required qualifications include at least six years of industry experience designing, building, and operating large-scale backend services in production. You should have strong programming and algorithmic skills, with proficiency in Go or a comparable programming language, and a solid understanding of concurrency, correctness, and techniques for identifying and preventing race conditions.

Relevant hands-on experience with distributed data stores such as DynamoDB, Cosmos DB, Spanner, Cassandra, or similar technologies is required. You should also have experience working with at least one major cloud provider, such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or Microsoft Azure. The role requires familiarity with observability and operational excellence, including service-level objectives, on-call practices, incident response, and postmortems. Strong written and verbal communication, sound engineering practices, and the ability to manage work independently are important.

Experience with Kubernetes operators or controller patterns is preferred. Familiarity with event streaming concepts and technologies, including Kafka, event ordering, idempotency, and at-least-once or exactly-once delivery, is also an advantage. Candidates must be authorized to work in Canada without sponsorship.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and evolve the metadata platform, including its read, write, and streaming APIs. Develop resilient, scalable backend services that operate across multiple clouds and services, and help ensure they remain secure, highly available, and straightforward to run.

Address complex distributed-systems challenges involving availability, consistency, sharding, and scale. Contribute to technical design decisions, implementation, testing, code reviews, documentation, and operational readiness. Use observability data and production feedback to improve reliability and meet service objectives.

Independently drive projects from problem discovery through delivery, identify high-impact gaps, and work constructively with teammates and partners. Participate in on-call and incident processes, communicate findings clearly, and apply lessons learned to strengthen the platform.

Benefits

IBM offers opportunities to work on impactful technology alongside collaborative teams and to develop your skills through continuous learning and career growth. Compensation is based on a full-time schedule, with the final salary determined by job-related skills and experience. Benefits and programs may vary based on location, eligibility, and applicable employment terms.

This position involves technology covered by export regulations and sanctions. Candidates who are foreign nationals from specified U.S.-sanctioned countries or regions and are working in Canada on a work permit may be ineligible for this position. Eligibility will be assessed in accordance with applicable requirements.

Equal Opportunity

IBM is committed to equal opportunity and a respectful, inclusive workplace. Employment decisions are made in accordance with applicable laws and based on job-related qualifications and business needs. IBM welcomes applicants with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.