Overview:
This is an incredible opportunity to be part of a company that has been at the forefront of AI and high-performance data storage innovation for over two decades. DataDirect Networks (DDN) is a global market leader renowned for powering many of the world’s most demanding AI data centers, in industries ranging from life sciences and healthcare to financial services, autonomous cars, Government, academia, research and manufacturing.

“THE REAL DIFFERENTIATOR IS DDN. I NEVER HESITATE TO RECOMMEND DDN. DDN IS THE DE FACTO NAME FOR AI STORAGE IN HIGH PERFORMANCE ENVIRONMENTS” - MARC HAMILTON, VP, SOLUTIONS ARCHITECTURE & ENGINEERING | NVIDIA

DDN is the global leader in AI and multi-cloud data management at scale. Our cutting-edge data intelligence platform is designed to accelerate AI workloads, enabling organizations to extract maximum value from their data. With a proven track record of performance, reliability, and scalability, DDN empowers businesses to tackle the most challenging AI and data-intensive workloads with confidence.
Our success is driven by our unwavering commitment to innovation, customer-centricity, and a team of passionate professionals who bring their expertise and dedication to every project. This is a chance to make a significant impact at a company that is shaping the future of AI and data management.
Our commitment to innovation, customer success, and market leadership makes this an exciting and rewarding role for a driven professional looking to make a lasting impact in the world of AI and data storage.
Job Description:
As the Director of End-to-End AI Applications, you will lead the design, development, and delivery of production-grade AI applications that power strategic customer use cases—from data ingestion and pipeline orchestration to inference, visualization, and decision automation.
This role requires a unique blend of deep technical expertise, product vision, and execution leadership across the full AI lifecycle. You will partner closely with Engineering, Product Management, Field Teams, and strategic customers to build scalable, reliable, and intelligent application layers on top of high-performance AI infrastructure.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role — where vision meets execution. You’ll champion the use of AI-native tools, automation frameworks, and platform integrations to reduce time-to-insight, accelerate delivery velocity, and drive tangible business outcomes.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 12+ years’ experience building distributed systems or data-driven applications, with 8+ years in AI/ML application delivery.
• Proven success designing and delivering production-grade AI solutions, including NLP, CV, or recommendation systems.
• Deep expertise in AI/ML lifecycle management, including data ops, model training, serving, and retraining loops.
• Strong knowledge of Python, cloud-native architectures (Kubernetes, serverless), and scalable data pipelines.
• Experience leading high-performing engineering and AI teams across geographies.
• Exceptional communication, executive storytelling, and business alignment skills.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience with GenAI/LLM platforms (e.g., OpenAI, Hugging Face, LangChain, Vector DBs).
• Familiarity with model compression, optimization, and accelerated inference using GPUs or custom silicon.
• Prior leadership in launching AI-enabled SaaS products or customer-facing analytics platforms.
• Contributions to open-source AI tooling or active participation in the AI/ML community.
  This position requires participation in an on-call rotation to provide after-hours support as needed.