Staff Engineer - Performance

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 Engineer – Performance with strong expertise in data path and I/O performance for large-scale distributed file systems. This role focuses on analyzing, optimizing, and improving performance across the storage stack, from low-level code paths to system-wide behavior at scale.

You will work closely with architects and cross-functional teams to investigate complex performance issues, implement optimizations, and ensure high throughput and low latency in distributed systems. This role emphasizes hands-on technical contributions, performance tuning, and data-driven decision-making to improve overall system efficiency and reliability.

Key Responsibilities:

• Contribute to the performance design of data path and I/O components in distributed file systems
• Perform performance analysis, troubleshooting, and optimization of large-scale, high-performance file systems
• Implement performance-aware improvements across CPU, memory, storage, and network layers
• Optimize performance-critical file system code, primarily in C++
• Apply best practices for performance measurement, profiling, benchmarking, and regression detection
• Investigate and resolve complex system-level performance issues
• Collaborate with architects and senior engineers to incorporate performance considerations into system design
• Work with cross-functional teams to validate and meet performance goals across the stack
• Participate in design reviews with a focus on performance implications
• Share knowledge and support peers in adopting effective performance engineering practices

Requirements:

• Accountable and highly motivated with solid people skills
• 10+ years’ experience system software development and complex problem resolution.
• Deep understanding of distributed file systems and scale-out storage architectures
• Expert-level knowledge of data path and I/O path design and optimization
• Strong proficiency in C++ with extensive experience in performance-critical code
• Proven expertise in performance measurement techniques, including profiling, tracing, benchmarking, and custom tooling
• Strong foundation in distributed systems principles, including scalability, concurrency, and fault tolerance
• Demonstrated experience optimizing file system or storage system code for performance at scale
• Experience with high-performance, high-scale-out file systems in production environments

What Success Looks Like

• Consistently delivers measurable improvements in throughput, latency, and scalability
• Identifies and mitigates performance bottlenecks early in the development lifecycle
• Produces reliable performance analysis that informs design and implementation decisions
• Contributes to stable, repeatable performance testing and regression detection practices
• Effectively collaborates with team members to meet performance goals across components
• Builds and applies strong performance engineering expertise to improve code and system quality

DataDirect Networks, Inc. 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.