Principal Engineer – Security Architecture

Overview

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. 

Job Description

DDN is seeking a highly accomplished Principal Engineer – Security Architecture to define and drive the security strategy for next-generation distributed storage platforms spanning S3-compatible object storage, POSIX-compliant file systems, and KV cache–based data services. This role is responsible for architecting secure-by-design systems across the data path, control plane, and ecosystem/protocol layers that power high-performance, multi-tenant, AI-driven infrastructure at massive scale.

 

As a senior technical leader, you will partner closely with storage architects, protocol engineers, platform teams, and security stakeholders to embed advanced security principles into every layer of the platform lifecycle. You will influence long-term architectural direction, establish foundational security standards, and guide implementation across globally distributed engineering organizations.

 

The ideal candidate combines deep expertise in distributed systems security, cryptography, identity and access management, multi-tenant architectures, and infrastructure security with the ability to drive cross-functional technical strategy and execution.

 

Key Responsibilities

• Define and lead the long-term security architecture strategy for distributed storage platforms, including S3-compatible object storage, POSIX/NFS file systems, and KV cache–based data services.
• Establish security architecture standards and secure-by-design principles across data path, control plane, orchestration, and protocol layers.
• Partner with Data Path engineering teams to secure high-performance data movement across storage tiers, including encryption, integrity verification, secure I/O handling, and low-latency protection mechanisms.
• Drive security architecture reviews, threat modeling, and Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC) practices across platform engineering initiatives.
• Architect enterprise-grade Identity and Access Management (IAM) frameworks integrating LDAP, Active Directory, OIDC, Keycloak, SSO, MFA, federation, and delegated authorization models.
• Design and govern fine-grained authorization systems leveraging RBAC, ABAC, metadata-aware policy enforcement, and tenant-scoped access controls.
• Define scalable multi-tenant isolation architectures across namespaces, encryption boundaries, policies, quotas, and workload segregation domains while enforcing least privilege principles.
• Collaborate with Control Plane engineering teams to design secure APIs, authentication workflows, policy orchestration, tenant lifecycle management, and platform governance controls.
• Partner with Protocol and Ecosystem teams to secure S3, POSIX/NFS, and related interfaces, including request signing, session security, endpoint hardening, and protocol-level protections.
• Lead platform-wide encryption and key management strategies for data at rest and in transit, including BYOK, tenant-scoped keys, dataset-level encryption policies, KMIP integration, and external KMS interoperability.
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