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.

Your role and responsibilities

About the Role: We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join our Consul team. This is a senior individual contributor role where you will provide technical leadership across projects, set architectural direction, and drive innovation in HashiCorp Consul — the open‑source and enterprise tool that powers service mesh and service discovery for thousands of companies worldwide.

As a Staff Engineer, you will not only solve complex distributed systems problems but also influence the long‑term technical strategy of Consul. You will collaborate across teams, mentor engineers, and ensure that our architecture scales to meet the needs of enterprise customers and the open‑source community alike.

Responsibilities:

• Define and drive the technical roadmap for Consul’s control plane and data plane, ensuring scalability, reliability, and security.

• Lead design reviews and guide architectural decisions across multiple teams and projects.

• Own and evolve critical system components, balancing short‑term delivery with long‑term sustainability. Evaluate new technology for future proofing and long-term integration

• Partner with Product Management, Field, Support, and other cross functional teams to align technical direction with business priorities and define 6-12 month roadmaps.

• Anticipate and address systemic challenges such as version compatibility, performance bottlenecks, and cross‑platform support.

• Mentor and coach engineers at all levels, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous learning. Advocate for the career growth and promotion of high-potential engineers.

• Represent Consul in the broader cloud‑native ecosystem, engaging with the open‑source community and evaluating emerging technologies (e.g., eBPF, service mesh innovations, zero‑trust security).

• Contribute to both Community and Enterprise editions, ensuring architectural consistency and user impact across offerings.

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

Master's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a proven track record of building and operating large‑scale distributed systems.

• Broad Domain Expertise: connects Kubernetes, Nomad, and Terraform into a unified automation strategy.

• Expert proficiency in Go (Golang) or equivalent systems programming languages, with deep knowledge of concurrency, performance optimization, and memory management.

• Strong understanding of distributed consensus algorithms (e.g., Raft, Paxos) and their application in production systems.

• Demonstrated experience leading architectural initiatives and influencing technical direction across teams.

• Deep expertise in networking protocols (TCP/IP, HTTP, gRPC), operating systems, and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure).

• Extensive experience with containerization and orchestration technologies (Docker, Kubernetes).

• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse stakeholders.

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred technical and professional experience

Bonus Points:

• Experience with infrastructure as code tools (e.g., Terraform).

• Prior contributions to or leadership in open‑source projects.

• Deep familiarity with service mesh technologies (Consul, Istio, Linkerd) or proxies (Envoy, HAProxy).

• Experience driving cross‑organizational technical initiatives or platform migrations.

• Knowledge of multiple data store technologies (SQL, NoSQL, KV stores).

Years of Experience:
10 - 15