Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. DataDirect Networks (DDN) is a global market leader in AI and high-performance data storage innovation. They are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead NFS architecture across distributed file systems, focusing on performance analysis and optimization for large-scale systems.
Responsibilities
- Define and own architecture for NFS across distributed file systems
- Drive performance analysis and optimization of large-scale, high-performance, scale-out file systems
- Architect performance-aware NFS design and architecture
- Drive optimization of performance-critical distributed file system code, primarily in C++
- Help drive best practices for performance measurement, profiling, benchmarking, and regression detection
- Lead deep-dive investigations into complex, system-wide issues
- Influence system architecture with a performance-first mindset around NFS and accompanying tradeoffs against other protocols
- Mentor senior and staff engineers on engineering techniques and methodologies
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure goals are met across the stack
- Represent NFS considerations in design reviews and long-term roadmap planning
Skills
- 15+ years of experience in NFS engineering, systems engineering, or distributed systems
- Deep understanding of distributed file systems and scale-out storage architectures
- Expert-level knowledge of NFS and distributed file systems
- Strong proficiency in C++ with extensive experience in performance-critical code
- Proven expertise in performance measurement techniques, including profiling, tracing, benchmarking, and custom tooling
- Strong foundation in distributed systems principles, including scalability, concurrency, and fault tolerance
- Demonstrated experience optimizing file system or storage system code for performance at scale
- Experience with high-performance, high-scale-out file systems in production environments
- Experience with kernel-level and user-space I/O stacks
- Deep understanding of modern storage hardware (NVMe, SSDs, RDMA, high-speed networking)
- Experience building or evolving performance frameworks and benchmarking infrastructure
- Background in parallel programming, lock-free or low-contention designs
- Experience influencing architecture across multiple teams or large codebases
Company Overview
DDN is the world’s leading AI and data intelligence company, powering the world’s most demanding AI workloads by keeping GPUs fed, efficient, and productive—at massive scale—so organizations can train, checkpoint, and infer faster with less footprint and power while achieving tremendous ROI from their AI investments. It was founded in 1998, and is headquartered in Chatsworth, California, USA, with a workforce of 1001-5000 employees. Its website is http://www.ddn.com.Company H1B Sponsorship
DDN has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships, with 3 in 2026, 5 in 2025, 3 in 2024, 2 in 2023, 4 in 2022, 3 in 2021. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role.