Job Information
IBM Senior Software Developer - Distributed Cloud Databases in Bologna, Italy
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.
We're building Astra Serverless, the next generation of distributed, scalable, fault-tolerant, serverless NoSQL data services -- powered by Apache Cassandra and extended with native vector and AI capabilities across multi-cloud environments.
Our customers depend on our platform to serve real-time, mission-critical workloads on a global scale. Ensuring reliability, performance, and correctness under unpredictable workloads is a non-trivial challenge -- and that's where you come in.
Your role and responsibilities
As a Software Development Engineer in our Cloud Native Database Team, you'll play a pivotal role in shaping the future of our distributed database platform and the team building it -- from architecture and performance design to leadership and mentoring. You'll work on systems that power mission-critical workloads for enterprises worldwide, helping ensure scalability, resilience, and reliability at a global scale.
Required technical and professional expertise
Lead design and development of advanced database features and distributed services across multi-region, serverless deployments.
Architect and optimize components for scalability, observability, and maintainability in high-throughput, low-latency environments.
Drive performance, availability, and fault tolerance, improving replication, compaction, and storage-layer behavior for large-scale clusters.
Guide and mentor engineers across teams -- elevating engineering practices, design quality, and distributed systems craftsmanship.
Collaborate cross-functionally with cloud platform, infrastructure, and quality engineering teams to deliver reliable, automated, and testable systems.
Contribute strategically to technical roadmap discussions and help define the long-term vision for our cloud database architecture.
Stay ahead of innovation in distributed databases, storage systems, and cloud-native technologies -- influencing how we evolve Astra DB.
Preferred technical and professional experience
Deep experience designing or operating distributed systems -- understanding consistency, replication, partitioning, and fault tolerance.
Strong software engineering skills in Java and the JVM ecosystem or C++ (experience with concurrency, performance profiling, and memory management).
Practical experience with database internals
Proficiency in Linux/Unix environments and debugging large-scale production systems at the lower level.
Proven ability to lead through influence, mentor engineers, and set technical direction.
IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.