Staff Software Engineer

As an Performance Engineering Lead, you will architect and drive the development of generic, extensible infrastructure solutions for all datapath squads. Your primary focus will be to benchmark and analyze the performance of existing algorithms and systems, propose alternatives, and ensure the infrastructure is scalable, resilient, and adaptable to evolving needs.

HOW YOU'LL SPEND YOUR TIME HERE:

• Lead the design and implementation of extensible benchmarking infrastructure for distributed systems, supporting multiple protocols and storage backends.

• Collaborate with datapath squads to identify performance bottlenecks, optimize system throughput, and evaluate alternative algorithms and architectures.

• Develop tools and frameworks for automated performance testing, profiling, and regression analysis across thousands of nodes.

• Ensure infrastructure supports hyper-convergence, distributed data paths, and web-scale architectures, including NAS, object storage, and cloud services.

• Drive consensus protocols, asynchronous programming, and performance optimization initiatives.

• Represent operational issues to senior leadership, providing deep technical insights and actionable recommendations.

• Mentor and coach engineers, fostering a culture of quality, ownership, and continuous improvement.
  

WE'D LOVE TO TALK TO YOU IF YOU HAVE MANY OF THE FOLLOWING:

• Minimum 10+ years of experience in infrastructure and back-end development, with a strong track record in large-scale distributed systems.

• BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science or related field, with expertise in data structures, algorithms, and software design.

• Expert-level programming and debugging skills in C, C++, Go. Expertise in — profiling, optimization, memory management, concurrency primitives (locks, atomics, thread pools, async I/O patterns) is an add-on

• Deep understanding of system performance, scaling, multithreading, concurrency, and parallel processing.

• Experience with NAS protocols (SMB, CIFS, NFS, S3), replication, disaster recovery, and distributed filesystems.

• Proven ability to solve complex problems, debug production software, and drive tasks to completion.

• Strong communication and analytical skills, with experience in technical feedback and code reviews.

• Ability to build and lead successful technical teams, coaching and mentoring individuals.

• Demonstrated experience leveraging AI tools to streamline workflows, enhance productivity, and support high-quality decision-making.

Preferred Skills

• Minimum 3+ years focused on performance engineering, systems optimization, or infrastructure for data-intensive systems.

• Experience with RocksDB or similar LSM-tree based storage engines — tuning, benchmarking, write amplification analysis.

• Familiarity with Protocol Buffers and RPC frameworks — understanding RPC latency profiling, serialization overhead, and async call flow optimization.

• Experience with Prometheus, Grafana, or similar observability stacks for performance monitoring and dashboarding.

• Background in file system internals (VFS, FUSE, NFS/SMB protocols) or block storage systems.

• Experience with Google Test / Google Benchmark frameworks for C++ micro benchmarking.

• Familiarity with containerized or clustered test environments (Ansible, Jenkins, distributed test orchestration).

• Experience with Python for performance analysis tooling, data visualization, or automation scripts.

• Background in network performance — TCP tuning, RDMA, kernel bypass techniques.

• Publications, talks, or recognized contributions in the performance engineering community.

• Proven track record of building benchmark infrastructure and regression detection systems at scale — including statistical methods for detecting regressions (t-tests, change-point detection, noise filtering).

• Familiarity with object storage, cloud services, and software-defined infrastructure.

• Experience in benchmarking, profiling, and performance engineering for massively parallel and distributed data sets.

• Knowledge of consensus protocols and fault-tolerance mechanisms.
  

Opportunities

• Shape the technical trajectory of the company by delivering scalable, high-performance infrastructure.

• Work on industry-leading hyperconverged platforms and limitless scale-out systems.

• Collaborate across teams to deliver impactful solutions and drive quality via code reviews and operational excellence.
  

This role is ideal for a senior engineers who thrives in fast-paced, agile environments and is passionate about building robust, scalable infrastructure for benchmarking and performance optimization across diverse storage and data services