Sr Staff Engineer

DDN; Sacramento (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

DDN is seeking a Sr Staff Engineer – Data Path to design, develop, and optimize performance-critical data path components within a distributed storage and data services platform. This senior individual contributor will influence architectures while staying hands-on in C/C++.

You will collaborate with cross-functional teams, drive performance, scalability, and reliability, and mentor engineers while upholding best practices for observability and testing.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in a technical field.
• 12+ years of experience in systems software, distributed systems, or infrastructure engineering.
• Proven experience designing and implementing performance-critical software components.
• Proficiency in C/C++ or similar systems programming languages.
• Solid understanding of OS fundamentals, concurrency, memory management, and networking concepts.
• Ability to work independently on complex problems and influence system-level outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and optimize core data path components in large-scale, distributed systems.
• Contribute to system architecture decisions affecting performance, throughput, latency, and resource utilization.
• Develop high-quality, maintainable code for performance-critical paths (C/C++).
• Analyze and optimize data movement across CPU, memory, storage, and network layers.
• Identify performance bottlenecks and drive solutions via profiling, benchmarking, and tuning.
• Lead design reviews and mentor engineers on systems design and performance engineering.

Skills

Systems design

Performance engineering

Leadership

Independent work

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field

Tools

C/C++

Job description

The Sr Staff Engineer – Data Path is a senior individual contributor responsible for designing, developing, and optimizing performance-critical data path components within a distributed storage and data services platform. This role focuses on the efficient movement of data through complex software systems, with an emphasis on scalability, reliability, and low-latency performance.
As a technical leader within the Infinia Engineering group, this engineer operates with broad architectural influence, partners closely with cross-functional teams, and drives best practices across the data path stack while remaining hands-on in design and implementation.

Key Responsibilities

Data Path Architecture & Development

• Design, implement, and optimize core data path components in large-scale, distributed systems.
• Contribute to system architecture decisions affecting performance, throughput, latency, and resource utilization.
• Develop high-quality, maintainable code for performance-critical paths, primarily in systems-level languages (e.g., C/C++).

Performance & Scalability

• Analyze and optimize data movement across CPU, memory, storage, and network layers.
• Identify performance bottlenecks and drive solutions through profiling, benchmarking, and tuning.
• Establish performance baselines and contribute to regression detection and prevention strategies.

Technical Leadership

• Act as a technical authority within the data path domain, influencing designs across teams.
• Lead design reviews and provide guidance on complex technical challenges.
• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers on systems design, performance engineering, and best practices.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with adjacent engineering teams, including platform, infrastructure, and quality engineering.
• Partner with Product Management to ensure technical feasibility and performance considerations are reflected in roadmap planning.
• Support downstream teams (e.g., solutions, customer engineering) as a subject matter expert when needed.

Quality & Operational Excellence

• Promote best practices in code quality, testing, observability, and documentation.
• Participate in incident analysis and resolution related to data path behavior in production environments.
• Contribute to long-term technical strategy and continuous improvement initiatives.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent experience).
• 12+ years of experience in systems software, distributed systems, or infrastructure engineering.
• Strong experience designing and implementing performance-critical software components.
• Proficiency in C/C++ or similar systems programming languages.
• Solid understanding of operating systems fundamentals, concurrency, memory management, and networking concepts.
• Proven ability to work independently on complex technical problems and influence system-level outcomes.