Confluent Event Leader

IBM
IBM

Administration

Remote

Posted on Oct 7, 2026
Introduction

At IBM Corporate Headquarters (CHQ) and Other Functions, diverse teams such as marketing, finance, legal, operations, HR, and more work together to keep IBM moving forward. These functions play a vital role in solving complex challenges, supporting our clients’ success, and creating collaborative environments for IBMers worldwide. Working in CHQ and Other Functions means contributing your expertise to a global network that values teamwork, problem-solving, and innovation. You’ll have opportunities to grow your career while helping IBM operate with excellence and scale its impact across industries. With a culture that emphasizes learning, inclusivity, and career development, IBM offers the platform to apply your skills where they matter most. At the heart of our business.

Your role and responsibilities

As a Client Experience Marketing Event Strategist, you will drive IBM growth by delivering exceptional attendee experiences through strategic thinking and flawless operational management. You will partner across various teams to design and deliver events that connect audiences to IBM's innovation, turning engagement into measurable business outcomes. The Confluent Event Strategist is responsible for defining and leading the global event strategy for the Confluent business within IBM. This role develops and executes an integrated event portfolio that supports business growth, audience engagement, pipeline creation, customer advocacy, and brand awareness across priority markets, industries, and audiences. This individual serves as a strategic advisor to senior leaders and partners across Marketing, Sales, Product, Ecosystem, and Communications to align event investments with business priorities and measurable outcomes. The Confluent Event Strategist establishes long-term event direction, drives innovation across the event ecosystem, and ensures experiences deliver meaningful value to clients, partners, and the business.

Key Responsibilities

  • Define and lead the global event strategy for the Confluent business, aligning event investments to business objectives, product priorities, and go-to-market initiatives.
  • Develop and manage an annual strategic portfolio.
  • Partner with senior stakeholders across Marketing, Sales, Product, and Ecosystem teams to establish event priorities, target audiences, success measures, and activation plans.
  • Design audience-first event experiences that engage priority clients, prospects, developers, partners, and executive decision-makers.
  • Ensure event programs contribute to measurable business outcomes, including audience engagement, pipeline generation, customer expansion, and brand awareness.
  • Lead portfolio planning, governance, budget strategy, agency relationships, and vendor partnerships.
  • Use data, performance insights, and market trends to optimize event investments and continuously improve program effectiveness.
  • Drive innovation through technology, automation, scalable event frameworks, and modern audience engagement strategies.
  • Provide thought leadership and guidance to event teams and cross-functional stakeholders across geographies and business units.
  • Ensure compliance with IBM policies, financial controls, data privacy requirements, and event governance standards.
  • Drive Strategy and Outcomes: Partner with demand generation, field marketing, and partner acceleration teams to define event objectives, target audiences, and success metrics that align to business goals, ultimately driving strategy and outcomes.
  • Design Impactful Client Journeys: Develop integrated event experiences, including branding, content, and engagement strategies, focused on capturing and converting client interest into pipeline and revenue.
  • Execute with Excellence: Manage all end-to-end event processes and tools, ensuring alignment with IBM's standards for audit, legal, and financial compliance, while maintaining a relentless focus on post-event performance.
  • Optimize Performance: Leverage a robust Response Lead Management (RLM) plan to ensure consistent pre- and post-event follow-up across field and sales teams, analyzing event results to extract performance insights.
  • Innovate and Lead: Provide thought leadership in event innovation, continuously improving processes, tools, and client engagement models to elevate IBM's event ecosystem.
Required education
Bachelor's Degree
Preferred education
Master's Degree
Required technical and professional expertise
  • Bachelor’s degree in marketing, Communications, Business Administration, or related field, or equivalent experience.
  • Significant experience in event marketing, experiential marketing, integrated marketing, or related disciplines.
  • Demonstrated success developing and leading global event strategies for complex technology organizations.
  • Experience working with executive stakeholders and influencing decisions across multiple functions and geographies.
  • Strong understanding of audience engagement, demand generation, pipeline development, and customer experience strategy.
  • Proven ability to manage large-scale event portfolios, budgets, agencies, and strategic partnerships.
  • Strong analytical skills with the ability to translate performance data into business recommendations.
  • Exceptional communication, presentation, leadership, and stakeholder management skills.
Preferred technical and professional experience
  • Experience in enterprise software, cloud, AI, data, or platform technologies.
  • Experience supporting acquisition, business transformation, or portfolio integration initiatives.
  • Experience with event and marketing technology platforms such as RainFocus, Captello, Adobe Workfront, Adobe Marketo, or similar solutions

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM has a global presence, operating in more than 175 countries with a broad-based geographic distribution of revenue. The company’s Global Markets organization is a strategic sales business unit that manages IBM’s global footprint, working closely with dedicated country-based operating units to serve clients locally. These country teams have client relationship managers who lead integrated teams of consultants, solution specialists and delivery professionals to enable clients’ growth and innovation. By complementing local expertise with global experience and digital capabilities, IBM builds deep and broad-based client relationships. This local management focus fosters speed in supporting clients, addressing new markets and making investments in emerging opportunities. Additionally, the Global Markets organization serves clients with expertise in their industry as well as through the products and services that IBM and partners supply. IBM is also expanding its reach to new and existing clients through digital marketplaces.

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.

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