Manager II, Engineering - KORA

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:

We are seeking a hands-on, distributed systems leader for our Kora Serverless engineering team. This team owns "Self-Balancing Clusters," the critical brain behind Confluent Cloud and Confluent Platform Kafka service. You will be responsible for the end-to-end infrastructure and intelligent algorithms that automatically manage heat and balance load, ensuring seamless scalability, elasticity, highest quality of service and zero downtime for our customers.

You will be leading the team that manages a fleet of thousands of clusters across AWS, GCP, and Azure, solving some of the most complex challenges in distributed systems at a massive scale. You will be directly responsible for defining the vision, building the roadmap, and driving critical cross-team efforts to deliver on an ambitious charter.

What You Will Do:

• Own the Vision & Execution: Define and drive the overall roadmap for the Kora Serverless team

• Lead & Mentor: Grow, coach, and nurture a high-performance team of distributed systems engineers. You will be responsible for hiring, performance management, and keeping a high bar for talent.

• Drive High-Impact Results: Lead critical technical initiatives focused on reliability, performance, scalability, and multi-tenancy. You will be accountable for meeting and exceeding the SLAs for our most critical cloud services.

• Foster Operational Excellence: Champion a strong culture of ownership and continuous improvement. You will lead effective root cause analyses and implement corrective actions to improve the security, reliability, and performance of your services.

• Collaborate & Influence: Work closely with product management, engineering leadership, and stakeholders across Confluent. You will align roadmaps and foster strong partnerships to solve complex challenges that cross organizational boundaries.

What You Will Bring:

• Experience: 12+ years in software development and 4+ years in an engineering management role.

• Cloud & Distributed Systems: Proven, hands-on experience designing, building, and operating distributed systems at scale in a major public cloud (AWS, Azure, or GCP).

• Leadership: A track record of leading and nurturing high-performance teams, with strong collaboration skills and the ability to execute against complex, cross-functional roadmaps.

• Technical Acumen: The ability to "see around corners" to reduce complexity and build enduring technical foundations. A strong bias for action and excellent prioritization skills.

• Education: Bachelor’s or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent.

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.