Staff Security Engineer

DDN; Sacramento (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

DDN is seeking a Sr. Staff Security Architect to design and implement end-to-end security across distributed storage platforms, including S3-compatible systems and KV/data services.

You will partner with engineering teams to embed encryption, IAM, RBAC/ABAC, and secure API workflows across data path, control plane, and ecosystem domains. The role demands deep expertise in encryption, key management, and secure design for multi-tenant, AI-driven workloads, with a track record of influencing

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in security architecture, infrastructure security, or distributed systems.
• Proven experience designing security for large-scale distributed systems or storage platforms.
• Strong understanding of data path vs. control plane architectures and their security implications.
• Deep expertise in encryption technologies, key management systems, and cryptographic frameworks.
• Experience integrating with external KMS solutions using KMIP or similar protocols.
• Strong knowledge of IAM, including RBAC, ABAC, SSO, MFA, and federation.
• Experience working with enterprise identity providers such as LDAP, Active Directory, and OIDC.
• Familiarity with secure API design, TLS 1.3, mutual TLS, and request signing mechanisms (e.g., SigV4).
• Experience designing multi-tenant systems with strong isolation and policy enforcement.
• Knowledge of logging, auditing, and SIEM integration for security monitoring and compliance.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of end-to-end security architecture for distributed storage platforms.
• Partner with Data Path engineering teams to ensure secure, high-performance data movement and encryption.
• Lead threat modeling, security reviews, and SSDLC practices across the platform.
• Define IAM integrating enterprise providers, supporting SSO, MFA, and federation.
• Architect fine-grained authorization models across tenants, datasets, and resources.
• Design multi-tenant isolation mechanisms across namespaces, policies, and encryption boundaries.
• Collaborate to define secure APIs, authentication workflows, policy enforcement, and tenant lifecycle.
• Work with S3 and POSIX/NFS interfaces to secure endpoints, signing, and session management.
• Define and enforce data-at-rest and data-in-transit encryption strategies.
• Drive observability and monitoring to detect anomalous behavior and data exfiltration.
• Provide technical leadership and mentor cross-functional teams on secure design.

Skills

Security architecture

Distributed systems

IAM

RBAC

ABAC

SSO

MFA

Encryption

KMS

TLS 1.3

Education

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

Tools

KMIP

SIEM

Job description

DDN is seeking a highly experienced Sr. Staff Security Architect to lead the design and implementation of end-to-end security architecture across distributed storage platforms, including S3-compatible systems, POSIX-compliant file systems, and KV cache–based data services. This is an architecture role focused on working closely with engineering teams across the data path, control plane, and ecosystem/protocol domains to ensure security is deeply embedded across all layers of the platform. You will collaborate with protocol teams, storage engineers, and platform architects to define secure-by-design systems that support high-performance, multi-tenant, and AI-driven workloads. The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in distributed systems security, cryptography, identity frameworks, and storage architectures, with a strong ability to influence engineering design and guide implementation at scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of end-to-end security architecture for distributed storage platforms, including S3-compatible systems, POSIX-compliant file systems, and KV cache–based data services.
• Partner closely with Data Path engineering teams to ensure secure, high-performance data movement across storage tiers, including encryption, integrity validation, and secure I/O handling.
• Lead threat modeling, security reviews, and Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC) practices across the platform.
• Define identity and access management (IAM) integrating enterprise identity providers such as LDAP, Active Directory, OIDC, and Keycloak, supporting SSO, MFA, and federation.
• Architect fine-grained authorization models using RBAC and ABAC across tenants, datasets, and resources.
• Design multi-tenant isolation mechanisms across namespaces, policies, encryption boundaries, and resource quotas, enforcing least privilege and segregation of duties.
• Collaborate with Control Plane teams to define secure APIs, authentication and authorization workflows, policy enforcement, and tenant lifecycle management.
• Work with Protocol and Ecosystem teams to secure S3 and POSIX/NFS interfaces, including request signing, session management, and endpoint security.
• Define and enforce encryption strategies for data at rest and in transit, including tenant-specific keys and dataset-level encryption policies.
• Drive observability and monitoring strategies to detect anomalous behavior, abnormal access patterns, and potential data exfiltration across the platform.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship across cross-functional engineering teams, guiding secure design and implementation practices.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 12+ years of experience in security architecture, infrastructure security, or distributed systems.
• Proven experience designing security for large-scale distributed systems or storage platforms.
• Strong understanding of data path vs. control plane architectures and their security implications.
• Deep expertise in encryption technologies, key management systems, and cryptographic frameworks.
• Experience integrating with external KMS solutions using KMIP or similar protocols.
• Strong knowledge of identity and access management (IAM), including RBAC, ABAC, SSO, MFA, and federation.
• Experience working with enterprise identity providers such as LDAP, Active Directory, and OIDC.
• Familiarity with secure API design, TLS 1.3, mutual TLS, and request signing mechanisms (e.g., SigV4).
• Experience designing multi-tenant systems with strong isolation and policy enforcement.
• Knowledge of logging, auditing, and SIEM integration for security monitoring and compliance.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with protocol, storage, and platform engineering teams.

Preferred Skills

• Experience working with S3, POSIX/NFS, or similar storage protocols from a security architecture perspective.
• Familiarity with KV cache systems, memory tiering, or AI/ML data infrastructure security considerations.
• Hands‑on experience with BYOK models and tenant‑scoped key management.
• Experience implementing ABAC using metadata, tags, and classification attributes.
• Background in zero trust architecture and distributed system security design.
• Experience with secure deletion techniques, including cryptographic erasure.
• Knowledge of compliance frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST, or FedRAMP.
• Experience designing security for high-performance, low-latency distributed systems.
• Familiarity with anomaly detection, security analytics, and alerting systems.

What You’ll Work On

• Defining and driving security architecture across data path, control plane, and protocol layers of distributed storage systems
• Partnering with engineering teams to embed security into S3, POSIX, and KV cache data services
• Building scalable encryption, identity, and access control frameworks for multi-tenant environments
• Strengthening tenant isolation, auditability, and compliance across the platform
• Ensuring secure integration across ecosystem components and external services
• Leading cross-team security initiatives that influence system design, implementation, and long‑term platform evolution