[Hiring] Sr/Staff Lustre Engineer @DDN

Role Description

• 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.

Qualifications

• 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.

Requirements

• 7+ years in HPC or storage software development (Nice to have).
• Visible contributions to the Lustre open-source community, including accepted patches, LUG participation, or public technical talks (Nice to have).
• Experience running or developing Lustre in cloud environments such as AWS FSx for Lustre, Azure Lustre, or custom cloud deployments (Nice to have).
• Familiarity with adjacent systems such as Ceph, DAOS, BeeGFS, WekaIO, or GPFS (Nice to have).
• Exposure to RDMA, NVMe-oF, CXL, computational storage, or AI/ML I/O workloads (Nice to have).
• Conference presentations, technical publications, or other public engineering contributions (Nice to have).

Benefits

• You’ll likely be a strong fit if you have built inside Lustre itself, not just around it.
• Enjoy solving hard kernel, performance, and distributed systems problems.
• Care about code quality, upstream contribution, and long-term architectural impact.
• Want to work on infrastructure that operates at real scale under real performance constraints.

Company Description

• This role is probably not the right fit if you have mainly supported or administered Lustre rather than developed it.
• Come from general storage or kernel backgrounds without clear Lustre code contribution history.
• Prefer high-level application engineering over low-level systems and kernel work.