Staff Engineer

DDN
North Carolina, NC
Hybrid

Who this role is best for

Strong fit for backend engineers with Go expertise and observability experience who thrive in collaborative, remote environments.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with deep Go experience and a background in observability for distributed systems
    — “deep proficiency in Go for building high-performance, low-overhead system components”
  • Individuals who have independently driven complex technical initiatives in telemetry
    — “Independent Feature Delivery: A proven ability to take ownership of complex technical initiatives”
  • Engineers with a track record of optimizing resource consumption in high-I/O environments
    — “Experience managing the CPU and memory footprint of monitoring agents”

Things to consider

  • Global on-call rotation may require availability across multiple time zones
    — “Contribute to our global team on-call rotation”
  • The role demands a strong understanding of cluster management and storage systems
    — “Systems-Level Troubleshooting: A solid understanding of Linux networking, filesystems”

How to stand out

  • Highlight experience with high-cardinality metrics storage using VictoriaMetrics
    — “VictoriaMetrics stack for long-term, high-cardinality storage”
  • Demonstrate ability to standardize and document complex telemetry frameworks
    — “Document and Standardize: Ensure our telemetry frameworks are well-documented”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • designing and building cluster management platform
  • optimizing observability stack
  • writing clean and performant Go code
Typical background
8+ years of backend development experience

Skills & requirements

Required

Backend DevelopmentGoObservabilityTelemetryDistributed SystemsLinux Networking

Preferred

Cloud-native SolutionsOpentelemetryPrometheusVictoriametrics

Stack & domain

Backend DevelopmentGoProduction-scale ObservabilityPrometheusVictoriametricsOpentelemetryLinux NetworkingFilesystemsClustered StorageTestingRegressionScrumCode ReviewsDocumentationCollaborative MindsetTechnical ClarityIndependent Feature DeliveryConcept VisualizationSoftware EngineeringCluster ManagementStorage Industry

About the role

Original posting from DDN via Ashby

We are looking for a hands-on Staff Software Engineer who will help design and build our Cluster management platform. DDN – Infinia engineers come from diverse backgrounds, and we consider them to be in the highest tier of technology game changers globally. They have created, architected and pioneered numerous advancements in data enabling technologies, and delivered groundbreaking ideas which have shaped and transformed the storage industry.

WHAT WILL YOU BRING TO DDN

  • 8+ years of backend development experience (with a target of matching our senior engineering standards), including deep proficiency in Go for building high-performance, low-overhead system components.
  • Production-Scale Observability Expertise: Hands-on experience implementing and operating telemetry pipelines for software-defined clustered, distributed, or cloud-native solutions.
  • Deep Mastery of the Metrics Stack: Strong technical knowledge of Prometheus (operators, alerting rules, scraping mechanics) and the VictoriaMetrics stack for long-term, high-cardinality storage.
  • Telemetry Industry Standards: Practical experience with the OpenTelemetry (OTel) ecosystem, including custom OTel collector configurations, instrumentation SDKs, and data processing.
  • Systems-Level Troubleshooting: A solid understanding of Linux networking, filesystems, and how clustered storage applications behave under heavy I/O workloads.
  • Collaborative Mindset: Proven ability to work effectively across geographically distributed teams, driving technical clarity through code reviews and clear documentation.

WHAT YOU HAVE ACHIEVED…

  • Built and Maintained Telemetry Pipelines: A proven track record of developing or extending proprietary Go components to efficiently ingest, process, and forward massive streams of metrics, logs, and traces.
  • Optimized Resource Consumption: Experience managing the CPU and memory footprint of monitoring agents to ensure they do not compete with core storage data paths.
  • Strong Testing & Regression Habits: Dedication to writing robust unit and integration tests to ensure telemetry components remain stable during live cluster upgrades.
  • Independent Feature Delivery: A proven ability to take ownership of complex technical initiatives and independently make progress in a fast-paced environment.
  • Concept Visualization: Ability to turn abstract cluster state data into logical, well-structured telemetry frameworks that bring visibility to complex system scenarios.

WHAT WILL YOU BE DOING

  • Execute the Telemetry Architecture: Take on core projects within the observability domain, ensuring seamless integration between our proprietary Go infrastructure and open-source tools.
  • Optimize the Observability Stack: Help design and refine how OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and VictoriaMetrics handle the massive metrics volume generated by our storage cluster.
  • Drive Code Excellence: Act as a key technical contributor to our Software Defined Storage control plane, writing clean, performant Go code and providing rigorous code reviews.
  • Full Lifecycle Engineering: Participate actively within the Scrum model—from initial design and coding to automated testing, usability reviews, and release.
  • Document and Standardize: Ensure our telemetry frameworks are well-documented, making it easy for other engineering teams to instrument their components properly.
  • Global Support Rotation: Contribute to our global team on-call rotation, leveraging your own observability tools to provide high-level technical support for our distributed footprint.

Source: DDN careers (Ashby)

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