Engineering Manager - Confluent - CC UI Apps (Kafka, Governance, and Tableflow)

Introduction At IBM Software, we transform client challenges into solutions. Building the world’s leading AI-powered, cloud-native products that shape the future of business and society. Our legacy of innovation creates endless opportunities for IBMers to learn, grow, and make an impact on a global scale. Working in Software means joining a team fueled by curiosity and collaboration. You’ll work with diverse technologies, partners, and industries to design, develop, and deliver solutions that power digital transformation. With a culture that values innovation, growth, and continuous learning, IBM Software places you at the heart of IBM’s product and technology landscape. Here, you’ll have the tools and opportunities to advance your career while creating software that changes the world. With Confluent, data doesn’t sit still. We put information in motion, streaming in near real time so organizations can react faster, build smarter, and deliver experiences as dynamic as the world around them. Your Role And ResponsibilitiesAbout the Role: Confluent Cloud UI Apps owns the core cloud experiences that data engineers, platform operators, and governance stakeholders use every day to discover, understand, and safely operate streaming data. As an Engineering Manager for Kafka UI, Tableflow UI, and Governance UI, you will lead the team that stitches these experiences together in Confluent Cloud — from Kafka-centric workflows and Data Portal to governance-aware views and Tableflow integrations. You will be responsible for a team that operates at the intersection of product, platform, and governance: evolving the Governance/Data Portal experience, completing the Tableflow story in the UI, and driving schema and catalog experiences (e.g., search, RBAC-aware editing, subject lifecycle) that sit on top of complex backend systems. You will run several initiatives in parallel, know when to lean in technically on architecture, backend contracts, and platform UX, and when to focus on building, coaching, and scaling a healthy, high-performing team. What You Will Do

• Own the overall vision and execution for Kafka UI, Tableflow UI, and Governance UI — including, but not limited to, Data Portal, Governance-aware Kafka experiences, and Tableflow integrations in lineage and catalog — to deliver cohesive, intuitive user journeys for data engineers, platform operators, and governance stakeholders in Confluent Cloud.
• Work closely with product management, design, and TPMs to build and drive the roadmap for these experiences, enabling seamless adoption and operation of capabilities like stream governance, schema management, catalog search and discovery, and Tableflow, while balancing net‑new features with migrations, deprecations, and UX improvements.
• Partner with backend and platform teams (e.g., Kafka, Schema Registry, Data Catalog/RBAC, Search, Tableflow/Unified Storage, Observability) to define clear API contracts and sequencing, de‑risk cross-team dependencies, and ensure UI flows remain robust as services evolve (including upgrades to new APIs and retirement of deprecated ones).
• Raise the operational bar for this team by instilling strong execution practices — including effective retrospectives, clear ownership and accountability, and a predictable approach to managing capacity across “big rocks” and papercuts — while giving the team room to choose the day‑to‑day execution model that works best (e.g., sprints vs. Kanban).
• Build, grow, and lead a team of engineers working on cloud UI applications: hire and retain top talent, provide coaching and feedback, create structured onboarding in a complex domain (Kafka, governance, catalog, Tableflow), and develop engineers into senior technical and leadership roles.
• Lean in technically where it matters most — participating in design and architecture reviews, shaping cross-surface UX patterns with design, guiding decisions around performance and reliability, and unblocking the team when backend contracts, deprecations, or ambiguous requirements threaten delivery.

Preferred Education Master's Degree Required Technical And Professional Expertise

• 8+ years of software development experience, including 3+ years leading engineering teams delivering complex, customer-facing cloud products.
• Strong experience with Kafka, data streaming platforms, or data governance/catalog systems, with a track record of shipping features on top of these technologies.
• Deep technical expertise in distributed systems and large-scale engineering, with hands-on experience building or integrating cloud-native services (APIs, RBAC, governance workflows, storage/table systems).
• Proven ability to drive execution across multiple concurrent initiatives—from new feature development (UX, workflows, integrations) to operational work (API migrations, deprecations, quality improvements).
• Experience hiring and developing high-performing teams, including coaching, performance management, and fostering strong cross-functional alignment with product, design, and engineering partners.

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

• Experience building or leading teams that work on governance and platform UX (for example, catalog or lineage UIs, schema lifecycle workflows, or table/warehouse integrations such as Tableflow, Iceberg, or similar) in a cloud environment.