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Introduction

A career in IBM Software means you’ll be part of a team that transforms our customer’s challenges into solutions.

Seeking new possibilities and always staying curious, we are a team dedicated to creating the world’s leading AI-powered, cloud-native software solutions for our customers. Our renowned legacy creates endless global opportunities for our IBMers, so the door is always open for those who want to grow their career.

We are seeking a skilled Software Developer to join our IBM Software team. As part of our team, you will be responsible for developing and maintaining high-quality software products, working with a variety of technologies and programming languages.

IBM’s product and technology landscape includes Research, Software, and Infrastructure. Entering this domain positions you at the heart of IBM, where growth and innovation thrive.

Your role and responsibilities

Key Responsibilities

 

Design, develop, and enhance components related to database server internals, including storage, indexing, query execution, and transaction processing.

 

Implement and refine query planners, optimizers, and execution engines with a focus on performance and scalability.

 

Analyze and optimize complex SQL and distributed queries, ensuring minimal latency and resource efficiency.

 

Contribute to Apache Spark or related open-source ecosystems, including performance improvements, extensions, and debugging.

 

Build and maintain large-scale distributed data processing pipelines.

 

Perform deep query analysis, profiling, troubleshooting, and root cause investigation for performance bottlenecks.

 

Design cloud-native microservices using Kubernetes and Docker.

 

Troubleshoot and debug production issues using advanced Linux debugging tools, logs, and metrics.

 

Collaborate with cross-functional engineering teams to define technical strategies and architectural improvements.

 

Mentor junior developers, conduct code reviews, and contribute to development best practices.

Required education
Bachelor's Degree
Preferred education
Master's Degree
Required technical and professional expertise
  • Required Skills & Qualifications

 

  • 9+ years of professional software development experience.

  • Strong expertise in:

    • Database server internals

    • Query planners & optimizers

    • Query execution frameworks

  • Hands-on experience with query optimization and SQL performance tuning.

  • Proven contributions to Spark open-source, or strong experience working with Spark internals.

  • Strong proficiency in Scala and/or Java, with deep understanding of concurrency, memory management, and functional programming concepts.

  • Solid experience with Kubernetes (K8s) and Docker for container orchestration and deployment.

  • Strong Linux fundamentals and hands-on experience with:

    • Linux profiling tools (perf, strace, lsof, etc.)

    • Kernel-level debugging (preferred)

  • Deep knowledge of distributed system design (networking, partitioning, replication, fault tolerance).

  • Experience with CI/CD pipelines and version control (Git).

Preferred technical and professional experience
Preferred Qualifications

 

  • Experience contributing to large-scale open-source projects (Apache Spark, Presto, Trino, etc.).

  • Familiarity with columnar formats (Parquet, ORC) and vectorized execution engines.

  • Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).

  • Knowledge of JVM performance tuning and GC optimization.

  • Exposure to big data query engines or OLAP systems.

  • Master's or PhD in Computer Science or equivalent experience in systems programming.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Software infuses core business operations with intelligence—from machine learning to generative AI—to help make organizations more responsive, productive, and resilient. IBM Software helps clients put AI into action now to create real value with trust, speed, and confidence across digital labor, IT automation, application modernization, security, and sustainability. Critical to this is the ability to make use of all data, because AI is only as good as the data that fuels it. In most organizations data is spread across multiple clouds, on premises, in private datacenters, and at the edge. IBM’s AI and data platform scales and accelerates the impact of AI with trusted data, and provides leading capabilities to train, tune and deploy AI across business. IBM’s hybrid cloud platform is one of the most comprehensive and consistent approach to development, security, and operations across hybrid environments—a flexible foundation for leveraging data, wherever it resides, to extend AI deep into a business.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

 

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

 

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

 

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business. 

 

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM 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, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

When applying to jobs of your interest, we recommend that you do so for those that match your experience and expertise. Our recruiters advise that you apply to not more than 3 roles in a year for the best candidate experience. For additional information about location requirements, please discuss with the recruiter following submission of your application.