Staff Data Path Engineer: Scale, Performance, Leadership

DDN; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 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 its distributed storage and data services platform. This senior IC will shape architecture while coding hands-on in C/C++ and collaborating across teams.

You will drive performance, scalability, and reliability, mentor engineers, lead design reviews, and align product roadmaps with practical tech choices in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering or related field.
• 12+ years of experience in systems software or distributed systems.
• Proven ability to design performance-critical components.
• Proficiency in C/C++ or similar systems languages.
• Strong OS, memory management, concurrency, and networking knowledge.
• Independent and influential problem-solver with leadership impact.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and optimize core data path components for large-scale distributed systems.
• Analyze performance, optimize data movement across CPU, memory, storage, and network.
• Serve as technical authority, lead design reviews, and mentor engineers on systems design.
• Collaborate with platform, infrastructure, QA, and product to align roadmaps with performance goals.
• Promote best practices in code quality, testing, observability, and incident analysis.

Skills

C/C++

Systems programming

Distributed systems

Performance engineering

Concurrency

Networking concepts

Independent contributor

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field

Job description

DDN is seeking a Sr Staff Engineer – Data Path to design, develop, and optimize performance-critical data path components within its distributed storage and data services platform. This senior IC will shape architecture while coding hands-on in C/C++ and collaborating across teams.

You will drive performance, scalability, and reliability, mentor engineers, lead design reviews, and align product roadmaps with practical tech choices in a fast-paced environment.