Staff Software Engineer

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.

DataDirect Networks Inc. (DDN) engineering organization is seeking a highly focused, self-motivated, innovative, and goal-oriented engineer to fill the role of Staff Software Systems Engineer for its "Continuation Engineering and Level 3 Engineering Support" team. The prospective candidate must have good analytical and debugging skills in Linux/ Virtualization environments to independently analyze and resolve technically challenging customer issues. The primary role involves system level troubleshooting, debugging & root cause analysis of DDN Storage Solutions as well as triage customer issues escalated to engineering by DDN's Global Services & Support team. This is a multifaceted role that requires collaboration with highly skilled personnel in & out of engineering department at unreasonable velocity across the globe.

This is a hybrid position that requires the candidate to be onsite at the Columbia, MD office at least twice a week

Key Responsibilities:

Technical Expertise & Escalation Leadership:

Triage, diagnose, and troubleshoot problems with DDN's storage systems in customer production environments.
• Take ownership of customer cases, validate technical aspects, and drive them to resolution with root cause.
• Serve as a primary escalation point for high-severity support cases, working closely with customers and internal teams to drive rapid issue resolution and minimize impact to customer operations.
• Directly contribute to the development of AI-powered debugging, log analysis, and system pattern recognition tools to accelerate resolution.
• Ability to multi-task and manage competing priorities, ensuring all objectives are accomplished with zero compromises.

Product Knowledge & Value Creation

• Be the SME and provide engineering support to DDN's Global Support & Services organization and to DDN's customers.
• Collaborate, coordinate feature development & timely release of software patches targeting customer reported field issues.
• Review the product documents and provide necessary feedback for both internal and external customer needs
• Strategically analyze field issues and generate product features to improve product quality and useability.
• Understand customer requirements and work towards enhancing the product quality and customer experience by improving reliability, serviceability & usability.

Customer Engagement & Business Enablement

• Conduct product & features training session to Technical Support & Professional Service groups.
• Clearly communicate complex technical topics to the varied knowledge levels of customers.
• Translate technical issues into executive-ready summaries and business impact statements.
• Actively contribute in PIER (Post Incident & Escalations Review) discussions and executive briefings for strategic accounts.
• Provide on-call assistance (outside of regular working hours) as needed during critical customer issues.

Minimum Requirements:

• 10+ years of hands-on experience in software development & enterprise grade product support.
• Advanced debugging skills at kernel/system/protocol/app (e.g., GDB, strace, tcpdump & perf).
• Exceptional analytical and methodical problem-solving skills particularly in diagnosing complex hardware-software interaction issues on a typical high end embedded platform.
• Strong communication skills-written, verbal, and reporting-with the ability to convey technical concepts clearly to diverse audiences.
• Deep understanding of high-speed parallel data transmission technologies including but not limited to SAS, SCSI, NVME Fabric, IP over InfiniBand, Fibre Channel & InfiniBand topologies.
• Strong knowledge of storage products, cloud storage architectures, cloud computing environments, data center operations.

Desired Requirements:

• Proven experience in interfacing with customers to help them troubleshoot product problems during install and production.
• Thrives in a high-paced, high demanding, rapidly evolving work environment.
• Strong understanding of data storage concepts including RAID/Erasure Coding & block storage.
• Hands-on experience with large-scale file systems like GPFS, Lustre or other parallel file systems.
• Demonstrate customer-centric mindset, with a strong commitment to ensuring customer success.
• Familiarity with AI driven tools diagnostics tools including log pattern analysis, LLM-based summarization, automated RCA solutions to accelerate diagnostics and reduce MTTR.

Education:

• A Bachelor's degree in Computer/Electrical/Electronics/Instrumentation Engineering or equivalent.

This position requires participation in an on-call rotation to provide after-hours support as needed.

Success Metrics - First 30 Days

• Technical Ramp-Up

• Complete SFA Storage systems & solutions training, labs, and architecture deep dives.
• Stand up a fully functioning SFA Storage system with an active filesystem.
• Shadow at least 5 complex escalations and participate in 2 customer calls.

• Operational Integration

• Demonstrate a clear understanding of the escalation process and release management.
• Lead at least one live incident response and deliver a full RCA within 48 hours.
• Establish key partnerships with Engineering and Field teams.

• Strategic Insight

• Propose 3+ enhancements to internal tools, AI/automation usage, or documentation.
• Deliver a written 30-day reflection outlining observed gaps and providing high-impact recommendations for product or process enhancements
• Begin identifying patterns where AI or automation can reduce MTTR or improve proactive detection.

Success Metrics - 30 Days to 90 Days

• Independently analyze and resolve a minimum of five complex field escalations, demonstrating technical depth and customer impact.
• Actively engage & lead at least five of DDN's strategic customer-facing calls to provide expert guidance and build stronger customer relationships.
• Troubleshoot software and hardware configuration issues within DDN's SFA storage systems, ensuring timely and effective resolution.
• Executive-ready RCAs that lead to product improvement.
• High-impact engagements with strategic accounts (prevention, performance tuning, etc.).
• Propose 3+ enhancements to internal tools, AI/automation usage, or documentation.

Pay range for this role: $136,000 - $177,000

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.