Senior AI Data Path & Storage Architect

Data Direct Networks; California (MO); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Highly Competitive Vacation Plans

Paid Holidays

Bonus Programs

Tuition Reimbursement

Employee Referral Program

Excellent Medical, Dental and Vision

Paid Leave Programs

Anniversary and Recognition Awards

Job summary

Data Direct Networks (DDN) is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer specializing in AI Data Path & Storage to lead hands-on development of high-performance storage for real-time AI inference. You will design data movement across GPU, memory, and storage layers using NVIDIA technologies.

You will mentor engineers, optimize NVMe, RDMA, GPUDirect Storage, and KV caches, and partner with AI/ML teams to deliver scalable, low-latency inference systems.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 12+ years of experience in storage or distributed systems with performance focus.
• Proven ability to architect and deliver large-scale, high-performance infrastructure.
• Strong Linux I/O stack knowledge and storage protocols.
• Hands-on NVMe/SSD optimization and GPU data movement expertise.
• Proficiency in Python and/or C/C++, with debugging and profiling skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and implementation of high-performance data movement pipelines across GPU, CPU, and storage tiers.
• Architect and integrate DDN Infinia with GPU-accelerated inference platforms for real-time workloads.
• Own end-to-end I/O path optimization between GPU memory and storage (GPUDirect, RDMA, NVMe‑oF).
• Define multi-tier storage architectures (NVMe, SSD, object storage) for low latency and high throughput.
• Lead KV cache management strategies including offloading, prefetching, and persistence across layers.
• Collaborate with AI/ML teams to optimize inference in PyTorch and TensorFlow.
• Establish benchmarking and performance tuning for production inference environments.
• Diagnose bottlenecks across storage, networking, and GPU subsystems.
• Guide architecture decisions for distributed inference systems with strong data locality.
• Mentor engineers and drive engineering excellence in observability and reliability.

Skills

Linux I/O

NVMe

RDMA

GPUDirect Storage

Python

C/C++

GPU data movement

Performance tuning

Distributed storage

KV cache management

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or Engineering

Tools

NVIDIA NIXL

Infinia Platform

GPUDirect Storage

RDMA/InfiniBand

Job description

Data Direct Networks (DDN) is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer specializing in AI Data Path & Storage to lead hands-on development of high-performance storage for real-time AI inference. You will design data movement across GPU, memory, and storage layers using NVIDIA technologies.

You will mentor engineers, optimize NVMe, RDMA, GPUDirect Storage, and KV caches, and partner with AI/ML teams to deliver scalable, low-latency inference systems.