Principal Engineer, Engineering AI Productivity

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’re seeking a strategic and hands-on technical leader to define and drive Confluent’s internal agentic AI capabilities, and adoption of smart, automated decisioning systems for R&D productivity. In this role, you will partner across Engineering, Security, and IT to scale AI usage across our platform to accelerate value for customers and the business. You will operationalize a vision where AI augments developers, automates routine tasks, and orchestrates intelligent workflows that unlock new usage patterns. WHAT YOU WILL DO: - Strategy & Vision - Define and evangelize the AI and agentic flows strategy — aligning business metrics, engineering needs, and platform opportunities. - Build a roadmap for introducing agentic automation features, smart assistants, and AI-driven workflows across all aspects of engineering. - Identify and resolve bottlenecks across the entire product and software development life cycle. - Cross-Functional Leadership - Partner with Engineering, Trust and Security to integrate AI capabilities responsibly and at scale. - Operationalize AI adoption internally and share use cases externally - Drive complex cross-team projects requiring multi-stakeholder alignment - Continuously raise the bar for code/architectural quality across engineering - Execution & Delivery - Lead the delivery of core agentic workflows that improves productivity across engineering - Balance of hands-on contributions with effective delegation to others. Expect 60% execution and 40% strategy setting. - Drive measurable adoption of AI tooling and flows with internal teams - Governance & Best Practices - Ability to adopt industry standards, ethical frameworks, guardrails, and quality metrics for AI behavior and automated flows. - Define success metrics and KPIs (e.g., AI-driven usage lift, automation ROI, reduction in manual workflows). - Thought Leadership - Participate in external forums — conferences, podcasts, customer briefings on occasion - Evolve as the technology landscape shifts - Write internal playbooks for building and scaling agentic outcomes. WHAT YOU WILL BRING: - Technical and Product Acumen - 8+ years driving strategic productivity initiatives, ideally in SaaS/Cloud platforms or developer tools with some proven experience in AI initiatives. - Considered an expert in building distributed systems and/or the infrastructure and tools to support it. - Leadership & Collaboration - Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence senior stakeholders without direct authority. - Strong communicator who can translate complex technical strategies into impact-oriented outcomes. - Execution Focus - Demonstrated track record delivering products or features that generated measurable business value. - Comfortable defining success criteria, metrics, and ROI for ambiguous, future-facing domains. - AI/ML & Automation - Hands-on experience with AI or adjacent AI/ML platform experience with LLM integration and workflow automation, with demonstrated appetite to build toward agentic patterns - Deep understanding of responsible AI practices and governance. - Customer & Business Mindset - Passion for solving real customer problems with elegant, scalable solutions. - Ability to tie technical efforts directly to business KPIs (adoption, retention, revenue impact). WHAT GIVES YOU AN EDGE: - Experience working in cloud-native platforms or developer ecosystems. - Prior leadership in scaling internal AI platforms or driving AI adoption across large organizations. - Background in real-time data, event-driven architecture, or platform engineering. If you’re someone looking to bring agentic system design to production scale, let’s talk. 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 http://ibm.com/careers/us-en/privacy-policy/.