DDN Senior Performance Engineer

The economic and engineering foundations of today’s datacenters are being radically transformed. Massive increases in ever-changing data are being generated and stored all over the globe, and need to be accessed, processed, analyzed, transformed and made available securely and in real time. At DDN www.ddn.com we recognize and embrace this new age of massive and diverse data and we pioneer the technologies, architectures and highly innovative solutions that make data available instantly and effortlessly, to everyone, everywhere, all of the time.

We are looking for a new Senior Performance Engineer to work within DDN’s Global Performance Engineering Team and operate DDN’s benchmarking centre in Dusseldorf. The Dusseldorf Office and Benchmarking Centre hosts a range of the latest DDN kit with servers, switches (IB and ethernet) and storage systems based upon DDN’s IME and SFA products. Benchmarks are run with GPFS, Lustre and other filesystems. Performance and Functional analysis are performed here by DDN performance engineering staff and by field engineers to fulfil both strategic goals and to support customer requests.

The candidate will be able to map end goals around system characterisation and analysis to a systematic benchmarking methodology and see that exercise through from start to finish, usually ending with a customer or internal facing report. The candidate will be flexible in their work, able to setup systems and networks ready for remote benchmarking and also able to execute benchmarks on Lustre/GPFS/IME etc independently. Working within a global performance team and regularly communicating with field teams the candidate will be able to work both independently and in tight concert with others. The workload will be primarily concerning setting up and executing synthetic and application benchmarks, with a significant aspect of lab management.

DDN Senior Performance Engineer

Job Requirements and Responsibilities

What you will bring to the DDN Performance Engineering Team...

• A self-starter approach, and an ability to work with a globally distributed team, communicating flexibly and regularly with field staff, management and colleagues
• Significant prior experience with filesystem benchmarking, complete comfort with compiling, executing and optimising a wide variety of codes, OpenMP, MPI across different network types.
• Practical ability to keep the lab maintained and up to date with respect to hardware and software, managing aspects of access and security.
• Possess and demonstrate excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Creative and analytical approach to problem solving
• Proven ability to multi-task and manage competing priorities

What you have achieved:

• Performed extensive benchmarking exercises and written comprehensive reports.
• BA/BS or MA/MS in a related technical field and several year’s experience which includes substantial benchmarking activity
• In-depth knowledge of performance analysis techniques and tools and a strong understanding of computer architecture, operating systems, storage and file systems
• Experience with High Performance Computing systems and networking and storage. A demonstrated ability to extract optimal performance from Infiniband clusters.

What you will be doing:

• Ensuring that the facility is maximally productive with respect to company goals
• Executing benchmarks and compiling reports under time pressure ready for customers or internal consumption
• Contributing ideas and plans to benchmarking activities
• Discussing outcomes of benchmarks on regular calls with field teams
• Occasionally discussing aspects of benchmarking and performance with customers and partners
• Providing performance characterization and analysis of the features and components of storage systems products
• Resolve performance issues and performance regressions
• Resolve performance issues in the customer environment, when escalated from the support organization
• Working to a demanding schedule with requirements for flexibility & travel
• understanding and analyzing competitive data to help product positioning and influence next generation roadmap
• Creating and delivering demos and/or working with the field to setup such demos