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:
DataDirect Networks (DDN) is seeking an experienced and technically visionary Vice President of Engineering to lead the Infinia organization, which is the foundation of DDN’s flagship AI-native distributed data infrastructure.
This is a senior executive leadership role overseeing a global team of approximately 90 engineers, with direct responsibility for defining the storage platform strategy, scaling execution, and delivering performance-critical, fault-tolerant distributed systems that power AI/ML, HPC, and enterprise data pipelines at scale.
The ideal candidate will bring 15+ years of experience in systems and storage engineering, with a track record of building and scaling foundational platform components, and leading large, multi-team organizations in mission-critical environments. Deep expertise in storage systems and low-level infrastructure is essential.
This is a hands-on strategic leadership role with wide impact. You will shape how data is stored, accessed, and moved across DDN’s global customer base.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 15+ years of experience in systems software, storage engineering, or infrastructure platforms.
• 8+ years in senior engineering leadership roles, including managing managers and leading large multi-functional teams.
• Deep expertise in storage architectures, filesystems, I/O optimization, and distributed data systems.
• Strong proficiency in low-level systems programming (C/C++/Rust), concurrency, memory management, and performance tuning.
• Proven ability to deliver platform software at the intersection of performance, reliability, and scale.
• Strong technical judgment, executive communication skills, and ability to drive cross-functional alignment in fast-paced environments.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Hands-on experience with SPDK, RDMA, DPDK, or other high-throughput storage/network stacks.
• Familiarity with distributed coordination, key-value stores, and metadata scaling.
• Background in AI/ML, high-performance computing, or cloud-native infrastructure (e.g., Kubernetes, microservices).
• Expertise in observability, tracing, and system profiling frameworks (e.g., OpenTelemetry, perf, Prometheus).

Lead and grow engineering teams responsible for critical infrastructure underpinning the Infinia distributed data platform, including:

• Storage stack performance and optimization (including SPDK-based I/O)
• Task scheduling, concurrency, and orchestration
• Distributed locking and metadata coordination (DLM, KVStore)
• Multi-tenant data isolation and scalability (TDS)
• Network I/O and event-driven communication
• Reliability, observability, and profiling infrastructure
• Filesystem client access and high-throughput data path