Jobs · Information Technology · California

Senior Staff Storage Engineer

DDN · Sacramento, CA · 3 wk ago
HybridInformation TechnologyFull-time

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Staff Storage Backend Engineer to design and optimize the next generation of high-performance distributed storage systems. This role focuses on building the core I/O path, improving scalability, reliability, and software quality across large-scale storage clusters. The ideal candidate has deep expertise in C/C++, distributed systems, storage architecture, and performance optimization, with a proven track record of building highly available, low-latency infrastructure.

Responsibilities

  • Storage Architecture & Development
    • Design, develop, and optimize high-performance storage I/O paths for extreme throughput, low latency, and high concurrency.
    • Build and improve distributed storage components, including erasure coding, data protection, recovery, and data layout algorithms.
    • Develop scalable concurrency models, locking mechanisms, and fault-tolerant designs.
  • Performance & Scalability
    • Analyze and optimize storage performance across CPU, memory, caching, scheduling, and data movement paths.
    • Drive profiling, benchmarking, and performance tuning across multi-node, multi-device environments.
    • Design asynchronous, event-driven architectures supporting AI workloads, high-speed data pipelines, and real-time analytics.
  • Technical Leadership
    • Serve as a technical leader for the IO Path team, driving architecture decisions, design reviews, code reviews, and complex debugging efforts.
    • Partner with engineering leadership to define technical strategy, evaluate new technologies, and influence the product roadmap.
    • Mentor engineers and promote engineering excellence through strong engineering practices and rigorous technical reviews.
  • Quality & Cross-Functional Collaboration
    • Collaborate with QE, storage, networking, performance, field, and support teams to deliver reliable enterprise-class software.
    • Partner with QE to identify quality gaps, improve validation strategies, and ensure robust coverage of complex distributed storage scenarios.
    • Debug complex customer and system issues and translate learnings into product improvements.
    • Influence CI/CD pipelines, automation frameworks, and release processes to enable scalable and reliable software delivery.

Requirements

  • 15+ years of experience developing large-scale systems software using C/C++.
  • 10+ years of hands-on experience designing and developing storage systems, distributed storage platforms, or high-performance I/O subsystems.
  • Deep understanding of storage architecture, I/O optimization, memory management, caching, scheduling, and data path design.
  • Experience with distributed storage concepts, including erasure coding, replication, recovery, and fault tolerance.
  • Hands-on experience with SPDK or similar high-performance user-space storage frameworks.
  • Strong knowledge of concurrency, synchronization, and distributed systems design.
  • Expertise in performance analysis, profiling, debugging, and system optimization.

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience with high-performance computing (HPC), AI infrastructure, or large-scale storage platforms.
  • Experience with distributed file systems, object storage, or hybrid storage architectures.
  • Knowledge of NVMe-oF, RDMA, and high-speed networking technologies.
  • Experience building observability, monitoring, and self-healing infrastructure.
  • Familiarity with containerized workloads and cluster orchestration.

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