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Staff Engineer-Full Stack-HCP Terraform Foundations Agent Services Engineering

4 days ago San Jose, CA

Introduction

The Foundations team is composed of Site Reliability Engineers and Software Engineers working on the HCP Terraform hosted service. Our team ensures that the platform's underlying infrastructure, data stores, and core foundational services are reliable, performant, and scalable.

We're looking for a Staff Engineer to join our team and serve as the Technical Leader of the Agent Services Engineering team. The Engineers on our team own the core foundational services that power the entire HCP Terraform Agent. These mission-critical services and data stores compose the Terraform plan and apply pipeline, and are used by every Terraform run which hits HCP Terraform.

An ideal candidate will have experience building distributed systems at scale, a principled approach to service security, and an interest in working closely with both infrastructure and feature teams to solve complex problems that span several services.

If you fit this profile, we'd love to meet you! We have a large footprint and a quickly-growing user base, with lots of interesting problems and plenty of opportunities for growth and development.

Your role and responsibilities

In this role, you can expect to:

  • Develop and maintain the Agent core services written in Golang as well as the Front End code that's in Ember.js
  • Work with product and stakeholders to define the next-generation architecture and Front End of the HCP Terraform Agent
  • Establish and foster best practices around service security and performance
  • Investigate problems, performance bottlenecks, and orchestration issues which span multiple services
  • Strive for quality through maintainable code and comprehensive testing from development to deployment
  • Communicate clearly while remaining empathetic and kind
  • Have an eagerness to learn through humility and reflection
  • Have experience debugging performance bottlenecks for live services and systems
  • Participate in a 24/7 on-call rotation that supports our production services

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As the Tech Lead, you can expect to:

  • Provide technical leadership to teammates through coaching and mentorship
  • Be responsible for technical deliverables, development timelines, and ensuring software architecture is aligned with the business and customer needs
  • Planning project scope and direction aligning with business and customer needs
  • Conduct code reviews and monitoring compliance with coding standards

Required education

High School Diploma/GED

Required technical and professional expertise

You probably have:

  • 7+ years as a backend software engineer and front end experience using Ember, JavaScript, or React
  • Experience building and scaling distributed, highly-available systems
  • Informed opinions from experience about service ownership best practices, incident response and resolution, and platform resiliency
  • Solid knowledge with one systems language, and ability to code in several more (our foundational services are written in Go and we also have a Rails monolith)
  • Experience debugging performance bottlenecks for live services and systems
  • Familiarity with best practices for application and infrastructure security
  • Strong communication and leadership skills

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

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

- Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being

- Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs

- Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law

- Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals

- Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.

IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.

Client-provided location(s): San Jose, CA, Abilene, TX
Job ID: IBM-83085
Employment Type: OTHER
Posted: 2026-01-06T18:55:44

Perks and Benefits

  • Health and Wellness

    • Parental Benefits

      • Work Flexibility

        • Office Life and Perks

          • Vacation and Time Off

            • Financial and Retirement

              • Professional Development

                • Diversity and Inclusion

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