Senior Staff Quality Engineer - S3

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 a Senior Staff Quality Engineer to drive embedded quality engineering for our S3-compliant high-performance file system. The candidate must have proven experience in systems-level quality engineering with technical leadership qualities, effective communication skills, and a self-starter mindset. The candidate must collaborate with development teams and individuals worldwide to deeply understand DDN products, technology, setup, and configuration, and must be able to design and own the quality strategy covering correctness, performance, and reliability across the S3 stack.

Key Responsibilities

• Own, extend, and improve the test strategy and automation framework for our S3 implementation.
• Define and articulate quality designs and test plans with appropriate technical depth, focusing on a shift-left approach. 
• Drive quality across the full development lifecycle — from design review participation through release validation.
• Participate in technical and design reviews to identify testability gaps and quality risks early.
• Architect and troubleshoot test coverage for system-level components, with emphasis on file system behavior, storage system correctness, and S3 protocol compliance.
• Undertake research-based quality tasks: define a test approach for novel features, document findings, and derive coverage conclusions. Design validation strategies based on the research conducted.
• Mentor junior QE engineers and embed quality practices within development teams. Lead by example across the QE spectrum. 
• Support product deployment validation and drive production defect triage and reproduction in a timely manner.

Requirements

• Accountable and highly motivated with solid people skills.
• 12+ years of experience in systems software quality engineering and complex problem investigation.
• Demonstrated ability to develop not just happy path testing, but testing designed to exclude possibility of customer-visible failures. 
• Expert knowledge of C/C++; strong scripting ability in Python and shell for test automation.
• Excellent Linux development and test environment skills, including file system-level testing.
• Full understanding of OS principles and kernel architecture as they relate to test design and defect analysis.
• Broad experience with open-source development toolchains including gcc, gdb, g++, and git.
• Experience designing and validating parallel and concurrent programs.
• Good communication skills (verbal and written English).
• Deep understanding of Linux file systems and the ability to reason about correctness at the syscall and VFS layers.
• Knowledge of user-space IO frameworks such as FUSE and SPDK, with ability to design tests that exercise them end-to-end.

Nice to Have

• Strong understanding of RDMA network principles, libfabric, zero-copy, and verbs — with ability to validate behavior in these environments.
• Experience with performance engineering and the design of performance regression test suites.
• Experience working with Scrum/Agile development processes.
• Experience testing complex network protocol implementations including TCP/IP or RDMA.
• Familiarity with S3 protocol conformance testing and object storage semantics.

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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