Director of Engineering - Infinia Data Engine

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.

"DDN's A3I solutions are transforming the landscape of AI infrastructure." - IDC

"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.

We are seeking an innovative and technically accomplished Director of Engineering to lead the development of the Infinia Data Engine - a foundational layer of DDN's AI-native data platform. This role is focused on building and optimizing high-performance data ingestion, transformation, and streaming frameworks that enable the world's most demanding AI and analytics workloads.

As the engineering lead for Infinia Data Engine, you will drive the design and delivery of scalable, cloud-agnostic data pipelines and seamless integration with modern open-source ecosystems including Trino, Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, Mosaic Streaming, Ray Data, and others. You'll partner closely with product, architecture, and field organizations to deliver AI-ready data infrastructure that performs at scale.

This is a hands-on leadership role at the intersection of open-source, distributed systems, and high-performance data engineering.

Build, scale, and lead a high-performing team of engineers focused on data ingestion, transformation, and streaming components within the Infinia platform.
• Drive the design and implementation of high-performance, cloud-optimized connectors that integrate with industry-standard open-source tools.
• Oversee the development of end-to-end data workflows that power AI/ML model training, inferencing, and real-time analytics at scale.

• Architect and refine a robust, low-latency data engine that supports diverse formats, compute engines, and workloads across on-prem and multi-cloud deployments.
• Benchmark and optimize data pipelines to meet the extreme throughput and concurrency demands of modern AI applications.
• Champion platform-wide initiatives around data interoperability, metadata management, partitioning strategies, and workload-aware scheduling.

• Partner with Product Management and Architecture teams to define technical roadmaps and prioritize high-impact work aligned with customer use cases.
• Engage with external partners and open-source communities to contribute to and influence the evolution of data frameworks.
• Represent Infinia's data engineering strategy in strategic customer conversations, industry forums, and internal executive briefings.

• Ensure the reliability, performance, and security of all data engineering components.
• Drive adoption of best practices in data governance, lineage, observability, and platform compliance.
• Promote engineering rigor through code quality standards, CI/CD automation, and scalable testing frameworks.

• 10+ years of engineering experience in data infrastructure, distributed systems, or large-scale analytics platforms.
• Proven track record of building and leading high-performance engineering teams.
• Deep technical expertise in open-source data frameworks such as Trino, Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, Ray Data, or Mosaic Streaming.
• Strong understanding of data ingestion, transformation, streaming, and orchestration for AI and real-time workloads.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and hybrid deployment architectures.
• Proficiency in distributed computing, parallel data processing, and system-level performance optimization.
• Excellent cross-functional collaboration and technical communication skills.

• Experience contributing to or leading open-source software initiatives.
• Familiarity with data lakehouse architectures, vectorized query engines, and high-throughput data connectors.
• Understanding of AI/ML pipeline integration, data lineage, or model-aware data orchestration.
• Background in HPC or other data-intensive compute environments is a plus.

Strategic Integration

• Ramp up on Infinia's architecture, data engine goals, and current roadmap.
• Meet with cross-functional leaders across Product, Field, and Engineering to align priorities and technical scope.

Early Contributions

• Identify performance bottlenecks or design gaps in current ingestion or transformation flows.
• Deliver a roadmap refresh or proposal for 1-2 strategic improvements in connector architecture or framework integration.

Team Leadership

• Assess team structure, identify growth areas, and define hiring or mentoring plans to strengthen execution capability.
• Establish sprint and delivery cadences, quality gates, and success metrics for the engineering team.

• Delivery of performant, production-ready connectors to key open-source ecosystems.
• Measurable improvement in data pipeline throughput, latency, or system scalability across representative AI workloads.
• Successful integration of Infinia's Data Engine into customer-facing workflows with clear time-to-insight impact.
• Team engagement and velocity metrics aligned with engineering OKRs and roadmap goals.
• Strategic partnerships or contributions to open-source projects that raise the visibility and technical influence of the platform.

Join us to lead the data engine powering tomorrow's AI breakthroughs - where intelligent pipelines, open standards, and performance at scale come together to redefine what's possible.

Apply now to build the backbone of AI-native data infrastructure with DDN Infinia.

Join our dynamic and driven team, where engineering excellence is at the heart of everything we do. We seek individuals who love to challenge themselves and are fueled by curiosity. Here, you'll have the opportunity to work across various areas of the company, thanks to our flat organizational structure that encourages hands-on involvement and direct contributions to our mission. Leadership is earned by those who take initiative and consistently deliver outstanding results, both in their work ethic and deliverables, making strong prioritization skills essential. Additionally, we value strong communication skills in all our engineers and researchers, as they are crucial for the success of our teams and the company as a whole.

Interview Process: After submitting your application, one of our recruiters will review your resume. If your application passes this stage, you will be invited to a 30-minute interview during which a member of our team will ask some basic questions. If you clear the interview, you will enter the main process, which can consist of up to four interviews in total:

• Coding assessment: Often in a language of your choice.
• Systems design: Translate high-level requirements into a scalable, fault-tolerant service (depending on role).
• Real-time problem-solving: Demonstrate practical skills in a live problem-solving session.
• Meet and greet with the wider team.
• Our goal is to finish the main process in 2-3 weeks at most.

DataDirect Networks (DDN) is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender, sex stereotyping, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, protected Veteran Status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

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