Director Engineering, Traffic & Networking

We’re not just building better tech. We’re rewriting how data moves and what the world can do with it. With Confluent, data doesn’t sit still. Our platform puts information in motion, streaming in near real-time so companies can react faster, build smarter, and deliver experiences as dynamic as the world around them. It takes a certain kind of person to join this team. Those who ask hard questions, give honest feedback, and show up for each other. No egos, no solo acts. Just smart, curious humans pushing toward something bigger, together. One Confluent. One Team. One Data Streaming Platform. About the Role: The Traffic & Networking organization is responsible for engineering the foundational fabric that facilitates the movement of vast data volumes between customer sources and our data streaming platform. Our infrastructure ensures secure, private, and high-performance connectivity across AWS, Azure, and GCP with minimal latency and optimized costs. By bridging all three major hyper-scalers, we empower streaming application teams to develop a globally distributed, real-time platform capable of processing and replicating data across nearly any geographic region. In the role of Engineering Director for Traffic & Networking, you will lead the Traffic Control-Plane team in managing a highly resilient, multi-cloud network orchestration layer. Serving as the central intelligence of our global fabric, the control-plane governs the entire lifecycle of the traffic data-plane and provides customers with networking APIs for seamless integration with Confluent Cloud. Additionally, it offers a programmable interface for our developers, simplifying the creation of multi-cloud applications by abstracting the complexities of cross-cloud and cross-region connectivity. What You Will Do: Manage a globally distributed team that is responsible for the programmable interface of our networking fabric. Act as a technical lead for the team driving vision, roadmap, and execution on various projects. Mentor managers as well as ICs, helping them become domain experts in various technologies and products that build our networking fabric as well as enable our customer’s data streaming use-cases. Drive cross-team projects, across various product pillars, that have company wide impact in delivering innovative capabilities on our platform and that build differentiation and bring value to our real time streaming customers. What You Will Bring: 10+ years of experience leading relatively large (12 or greater) highly technical teams. Deep technical understanding of cloud infrastructure. Especially Kubernetes, cloud networking. A background in developing and leading teams that specialize in building high scalable distributed cloud native applications. Experience building SaaS products and platforms What Gives You an Edge: Understanding cloud networking, especially as a user of cloud infrastructure across the three hyper scalers. Experience running cloud hosted services, especially enterprise applications A background in real time streaming infrastructure and data processing infrastructure A Masters/PhD in Computer Science or a related field 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. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. Employment decisions are based on job-related criteria, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other classification protected by law. Privacy Statement Confluent is an IBM subsidiary which has been acquired by IBM and will be integrated into the IBM organization. By proceeding with this application, you understand that Confluent will share your personal information with other IBM affiliates involved in your recruitment process, wherever these are located. More Information on how IBM protects your personal information, including the safeguards in case of cross-border data transfer, are available here .