Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. DDN is seeking a Sr/Staff Lustre Engineer to work on challenging storage engineering problems. The role involves designing, building, and optimizing Lustre features while collaborating with senior engineers to enhance Lustre architecture for modern infrastructure.
Responsibilities
- Contribute to Lustre architecture and lead implementation of new features across core subsystems including MDS/OSS, LDLM, DNE, DoM, FLD, layout, snapshot, quota, security, and recovery
- Write high-performance, production-grade code across the Lustre kernel module, user-space utilities, and supporting libraries
- Own the full development lifecycle for major features, from design and coding through testing, performance tuning, and upstream patch submission
- Improve scalability for multi-petabyte Lustre environments, including metadata performance, I/O path optimization, and integration with modern interconnects and storage fabrics
- Modernize Lustre internals through kernel API updates, locking improvements, RDMA enhancements, and cloud/container-oriented capabilities
- Prototype and evaluate emerging technologies such as NVMe-oF, CXL, and other next-generation storage approaches for potential Lustre integration
- Strengthen regression, stress, and performance validation using tools such as IOR, mdtest, fio, and custom Lustre test tooling
- Perform deep code-level performance analysis using Lustre tracing tools, `perf`, `lockstat`, and kernel profilers
- Work closely with Principal Engineers, hardware teams, and application owners to translate real workload needs into practical Lustre improvements
- Mentor other developers and contribute design docs, technical guides, and engineering reviews
Skills
- 7+ years of progressive, hands-on Lustre software development experience
- A strong track record of meaningful contributions to the Lustre codebase in production or open-source environments
- Demonstrated success designing, implementing, and upstreaming Lustre features that made it into major releases
- Deep understanding of Lustre internals, including MDS/OSS architecture, LDLM locking and recovery, journaling, DNE, DoM, FLD, layout, quota, and security
- Expert-level C programming and strong Linux kernel development experience
- Strong knowledge of distributed systems, parallel file systems, and high-performance I/O
- Experience with Lustre build, development, and debugging tooling such as `lctl`, `llstat`, `strace`, `perf`, and kernel tracers
- Python and/or Bash skills for tooling and automation
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field
- Clear written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts effectively
- 7+ years in HPC or storage software development
- Visible contributions to the Lustre open-source community, including accepted patches, LUG participation, or public technical talks
- Experience running or developing Lustre in cloud environments such as AWS FSx for Lustre, Azure Lustre, or custom cloud deployments
- Familiarity with adjacent systems such as Ceph, DAOS, BeeGFS, WekaIO, or GPFS
- Exposure to RDMA, NVMe-oF, CXL, computational storage, or AI/ML I/O workloads
- Conference presentations, technical publications, or other public engineering contributions
Company Overview
DDN is the world’s leading AI and data intelligence company, powering the world’s most demanding AI workloads by keeping GPUs fed, efficient, and productive—at massive scale—so organizations can train, checkpoint, and infer faster with less footprint and power while achieving tremendous ROI from their AI investments. It was founded in 1998, and is headquartered in Chatsworth, California, USA, with a workforce of 1001-5000 employees. Its website is http://www.ddn.com.Company H1B Sponsorship
DDN has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships, with 3 in 2026, 5 in 2025, 3 in 2024, 2 in 2023, 4 in 2022, 3 in 2021. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role.