Staff Software Engineer – Backend (Control Plane)

This is an incredible opportunity to be part of a company that has been at the forefront of AI and high-performance data storage innovation for over two decades. DataDirect Networks (DDN) is a global market leader renowned for powering many of the world's most demanding AI data centers, in industries ranging from life sciences and healthcare to financial services, autonomous cars, Government, academia, research and manufacturing.

"DDN's A3I solutions are transforming the landscape of AI infrastructure." – IDC 

“The real differentiator is DDN. I never hesitate to recommend DDN. DDN is the de facto name for AI Storage in high performance environments” - Marc Hamilton, VP, Solutions Architecture & Engineering | NVIDIA 

DDN is the global leader in AI and multi-cloud data management at scale. Our cutting-edge data intelligence platform is designed to accelerate AI workloads, enabling organizations to extract maximum value from their data. With a proven track record of performance, reliability, and scalability, DDN empowers businesses to tackle the most challenging AI and data-intensive workloads with confidence. 

Our success is driven by our unwavering commitment to innovation, customer-centricity, and a team of passionate professionals who bring their expertise and dedication to every project. This is a chance to make a significant impact at a company that is shaping the future of AI and data management. 

Our commitment to innovation, customer success, and market leadership makes this an exciting and rewarding role for a driven professional looking to make a lasting impact in the world of AI and data storage. 

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer – Backend to join the Control Plane team for the DDN Infinia AI Data Platform. This role is critical in building the core backend services that power manageability, API-driven control, automation, and intelligent supportability across large-scale hybrid (OnPrem + cloud) environments.

You will design and develop highly scalable, secure, and resilient backend systems that enable centralized orchestration, lifecycle management, policy enforcement, and integration with external systems. This role also involves enhancing API frameworks, improving supportability, and embedding security best practices across the platform.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role focused on building foundational services that operate reliably at petabyte scale and support mission-critical AI/data workloads.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and build scalable, high-performance distributed backend services powering the platform control plane.
• Develop APIs for centralized management of storage and compute across multi-region hybrid (OnPrem + cloud) environments.
• Architect and implement resilient microservices with strong consistency, fault tolerance, high availability, and low latency at petabyte scale.
• Contribute to the evolution of an API-first platform, designing clean, versioned, extensible APIs (REST/gRPC) for control, automation, and integration.
• Own API lifecycle management including versioning, backward compatibility, deprecation strategies, and governance; ensure APIs are intuitive, consistent, and well-documented.
• Enable APIs to support automation, policy-driven workflows, and ecosystem integrations.
• Build backend systems supporting provisioning, scaling, upgrades, configuration, and full lifecycle management.
• Implement policy-driven orchestration and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) integrations.
• Support RBAC, multi-tenancy, and enterprise-grade self-service capabilities.
• Instrument services with logs, metrics, traces, and events to enable deep observability, automated diagnostics, troubleshooting, and incident resolution.
• Contribute to alerting, incident correlation, and root cause analysis capabilities to improve operational transparency and supportability.
• Design and implement secure-by-design systems with strong authentication, authorization, RBAC, encryption (in transit and at rest), and audit logging.
• Collaborate with security teams to ensure compliance with enterprise and regulatory standards.
• Design systems for fault tolerance, graceful degradation, disaster recovery, and seamless upgrades/rollbacks with minimal or zero downtime.
• Drive engineering excellence through code reviews, design reviews, and adherence to best practices.

Programming & Technology Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in backend or distributed systems engineering
• Strong experience designing and building microservices-based architectures
• Proficiency in at least one modern backend language (e.g., Go, C++, Java, Python, or similar)
• Experience designing and implementing APIs (REST and/or gRPC)
• Deep understanding of distributed systems concepts (consistency, availability, partition tolerance, etc.)
• Experience with cloud-native architectures and containerized environments
• Strong knowledge of security principles including authentication, authorization, and encryption
• Strong understanding of object-oriented design, data structures, and algorithms.
• Experience building and maintaining large-scale distributed systems using modern software engineering practices.
• Experience with containerized environments and orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes).
• Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and automated testing frameworks.  

Success Metrics

• Delivery of robust, scalable backend services supporting control plane operations
• High-quality, well-documented, and stable APIs with strong adoption
• Reduced operational friction through automation and improved supportability
• Strong system reliability, performance, and uptime at scale
• Secure, compliant services with minimal vulnerabilities and audit issues
• Successful deployment and operation across both OnPrem and cloud environments
• Positive collaboration and influence across engineering teams

Join our dynamic and driven team, where engineering excellence is at the heart of everything we do. We seek individuals who love to challenge themselves and are fueled by curiosity. Here, you'll have the opportunity to work across various areas of the company, thanks to our flat organizational structure that encourages hands-on involvement and direct contributions to our mission. Leadership is earned by those who take initiative and consistently deliver outstanding results, both in their work ethic and deliverables, making strong prioritization skills essential. Additionally, we value strong communication skills in all our engineers and researchers, as they are crucial for the success of our teams and the company as a whole.

Interview Process: After submitting your application, one of our recruiters will review your resume. If your application passes this stage, you will be invited to a 30-minute interview during which a member of our team will ask some basic questions. If you clear the interview, you will enter the main process, which can consist of up to four interviews in total:

• Coding assessment: Often in a language of your choice.
• Systems design: Translate high-level requirements into a scalable, fault-tolerant service (depending on role).
• Real-time problem-solving: Demonstrate practical skills in a live problem-solving session.
• Meet and greet with the wider team.
• Our goal is to finish the main process in 2-3 weeks at most.

DataDirect Networks (DDN) is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender, sex stereotyping, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, protected Veteran Status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.