About the Role:

As a Field CTO at Confluent, you will serve as both a technical strategist and a trusted advisor, engaging with our GTM and R&D teams to propel the adoption of Confluent platforms among key strategic customers. Your responsibilities will include creating influential thought leadership content and delivering practical insights internally aimed at enhancing our product offerings. This involves translating customer feedback into actionable product features and engaging directly with important stakeholders within customer organizations to address their business challenges and showcase the value Confluent can offer. Beyond internal collaborations, you'll also stand as the public face of Confluent's technical vision, representing the company at various public events such as conferences and workshops. Additionally, you'll play a crucial role in mentoring and guiding both our internal technical teams and those at customer sites, ensuring they successfully implement and optimize Confluent solutions, thereby strengthening our customer relationships and reinforcing our market position.

What You Will Do:

• Develop and refine Confluent's technical strategy in collaboration with our product and engineering teams to meet market needs

• Deliver compelling presentations and technical briefings to a variety of audiences, including engineers, developers, architects, and executives to both prospective and existing customers both virtually and in person

• Build strong relationships with decision-makers and influencers within our customers’ organizations to secure and expand Confluent adoption

• Act as a conduit between the field and our product teams, gathering and prioritizing product feedback and feature requests

• Foster a community of Confluent users and contributors, enhancing our ecosystem and its value to our customers

• Partner with our field teams to produce strategic outcomes for our global theaters and enable our account teams to more effectively create value for our customers

What You Will Bring:

• Experience in a customer-facing technology advocate role, such as Solutions Architect, Pre-Sales Engineer, or Technical Consultant, ideally in the software or data platform space

• Strong technical foundation and ability to understand complex distributed systems, software architecture, and data streaming technologies

• Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, with a proven track record of building relationships with stakeholders at all levels

• Demonstrated ability to translate technical features into business benefits and to articulate these effectively to a non-technical audience

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience

What Gives You an Edge:

• Prior experience with Kafka or similar streaming data technologies

• Deep understanding of cloud ecosystems and experience with public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)

• Active participation in open-source communities or previous experience working on open-source projects

• Proven ability to lead and influence cross-functional teams in product development or go-to-market strategies

• Experience working in fast-paced, high-growth technology companies

• Experience in strategic customer-facing roles influencing decision-makers and key technology leaders