Staff Build Systems Engineer

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 worlds most demanding AI data centers in industries ranging from life sciences and healthcare to financial services autonomous cars Government academia research and manufacturing.

DDNs 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 Summary:

Why Join Us

This role combines systems software developer productivity and product delivery. You will own a complex multi-component build ecosystem and modernize it without disrupting active development or releases.

End-to-End Ownership: Own and evolve build workflows from source checkout through compilation packaging publication and installation validation. Define and modernize build architecture while maintaining and improving existing systems to ensure reliability and scalability.

Build Modernization: Introduce maintainable scalable build technology while preserving existing product capabilities.

Developer Productivity: Reduce build times improve diagnostics and ensure consistency across developer and CI environments. Own and enhance local developer tooling including build scripts and containerized dev environments. Lead CI/CD design and maintenance in collaboration with DevOps where needed and drive release automation and artifact promotion workflows to streamline delivery.

Core Responsibilities:

Own the technical direction and operational reliability of the product build ecosystem in partnership with Development QA Release and DevOps.

Build Systems and Toolchains: Own C/C Go and npm build workflows including compilers linkers flags dependencies and configuration.

Reproducible Environments: Standardize containerized and host build environments and maintain local CI and release branch consistency.

Internal Build Automation: Maintain orchestration utilities for component builds full-product builds packaging and deployment preparation.

Failure Diagnosis: Resolve compiler linker dependency packaging platform and developer-versus-CI issues.

Artifacts and Packaging: Produce versioned container images and Debian/RPM packages; validate dependencies installation upgrades and rollback.

CI and Artifact Repositories: Integrate builds with CI platforms and repositories such as Nexus JFrog Artifactory Harbor or Quay.

Build Performance: Improve clean and incremental build times through caching parallelism dependency tracking and measurement.

What Youll Work On:

Build-System Modernization: Inventory SCons logic and evaluate CMake Meson/Ninja Bazel and other suitable alternatives.

Prototyping and Migration: Benchmark alternatives and deliver staged migration with compatibility validation and rollback plans.

Multi-Platform Delivery: Support multiple processor architectures Linux distributions build variants and release branches.

Technical Leadership: Write designs set standards review changes mentor engineers and drive cross-team decisions.

Required Skills:

All of the following skills are mandatory:

Experience: 8 years in software build engineering developer infrastructure or a closely related field.

C/C Builds: Strong Linux compilation and linking knowledge with GCC/Clang and SCons Make CMake Meson Ninja or Bazel.

Automation: Strong Python and Bash skills for maintainable build tooling and diagnostics.

Other Ecosystems: Practical experience with Go build tooling and workflows.

Containers: Experience with Docker-based build environments and multi-stage images.

Linux Packaging: Hands-on Debian and RPM packaging dependency management versioning installation upgrades and publication.

CI/CD: Build-system integration with GitHub Actions Jenkins GitLab CI or equivalent platforms and artifact repositories.

Collaboration: Strong troubleshooting documentation communication ownership and cross-team technical leadership. Preferred Skills: The following skills are desirable but not mandatory: DDN Confidential

Build Acceleration: ccache sccache distributed builds remote execution or comparable optimization technologies.

Secure Builds: Hermetic builds dependency pinning provenance SBOMs signing or software supply chain security.

Migration Experience: Migration from a legacy build system to CMake Meson/Ninja Bazel or a comparable platform.

Systems Software: Storage networking operating system compiler or other performance-critical software.

Developer Productivity: Build-health metrics engineering standards documentation and self-service developer workflows.

This position may participate in a scheduled support rotation for critical build and release issues as needed.

DataDirect Networks Inc. is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race color religion gender gender identity gender expression transgender sex stereotyping sexual orientation national origin disability protected Veteran Status or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal state or local law.