Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer, Kubernetes Storage

Pure Storage, Inc.; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 208,000 - 305,000; Full time

Job summary

Pure Storage, Inc. is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to embed with strategic customers, shaping production Portworx architectures and advising on complex Kubernetes/storage deployments.

You will own engagements end-to-end, from validation to handoff, building trusted advisor relationships with infrastructure leaders. Work spans on-prem environments with bare metal, hypervisor, and network layers; you’ll document decisions and enable customers to operate their platform post-engagement.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in infrastructure or platform engineering, SRE, architecture, or field and solutions engineering roles; prior forward deployed, field engineering, or professional services experience a plus
• Must have Unix & Linux administrator experience
• Deep Kubernetes expertise (CKA/CKS or equivalent), grounded in having run clusters in production
• Strong command of enterprise storage: Fibre Channel SAN (zoning, WWPNs, fabric login and path behavior), iSCSI, NVMe/TCP, NAS protocols, dm-multipath, LVM, and array-side provisioning, masking, and mapping
• Production-grade virtualization knowledge, ideally VMware vSphere and ESXi (datastores, VMFS, vVols, HA and DRS behavior, resource contention), plus understanding of KubeVirt as a migration target
• Practical data center networking: VLANs and trunking, MTU and jumbo frames, bonding and LACP, L2 vs L3 boundaries, routing, load balancer integration
• Solid Linux systems background extending to block and device layers: udev, kernel and sysctl tuning, systemd, I/O scheduling, performance triage with iostat, blktrace, and perf
• Familiarity with cloud and managed Kubernetes platforms (EKS, AKS, GKE, OpenShift) is useful in hybrid deployments
• Prior experience with Portworx, CSI-based storage platforms, or enterprise storage vendors is highly valued
• Genuine relationship-building instincts and ability to advise and teach rather than just code
• Strong technical writing skills

Responsibilities

• Design and review production Portworx architectures for complex, high-stakes environments
• Pressure-test the customer's intended design against compute, storage fabric, hypervisor, and network
• Advise on decisions that determine production readiness and deployment survivability
• Guide the customer's infrastructure and platform teams through LUN presentation, masking, and hardware choices
• Validate architecture patterns in a lab before on-site engagements when beneficial
• Define failure-mode and performance validation plans before go-live and interpret results with the customer
• Act as the senior technical voice during critical rollouts and live escalations
• Author reference architectures, runbooks, and decision frameworks for reusable IP
• Upskill customer platform teams for independent operation post-handoff
• Build relationships across the customer's platform organization, aligning with Directors and VPs for broader strategy
• Conduct periodic visits to established accounts to surface expansion opportunities
• Develop fluency in customer development environments and workflows to address platform needs
• Log and structure field feedback for a recurring product feedback loop
• Partner with Sales Engineering, Customer Success, and Support to triage engagements for FDE involvement
• We are primarily an in-office environment and you will work from Santa Clara, Chicago, or New York office in compliance with policies

Skills

Kubernetes expertise

Linux admin

Fibre Channel SAN

VMware vSphere

Portworx experience

CI/CD familiarity

Networking fundamentals

SRE / infra engineering

Cloud Kubernetes

Technical writing

Tools

Portworx

KubeVirt

VMware ESXi

iSCSI

Job description

Pure Storage, Inc. is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to embed with strategic customers, shaping production Portworx architectures and advising on complex Kubernetes/storage deployments.

You will own engagements end-to-end, from validation to handoff, building trusted advisor relationships with infrastructure leaders. Work spans on-prem environments with bare metal, hypervisor, and network layers; you’ll document decisions and enable customers to operate their platform post-engagement.