Director, Software Engineering - Storage Services

Director, Software Engineering – Storage Services

Are you passionate about solving complex problems, building scalable and resilient storage platforms, and growing and developing technical teams? Do you have a passion for large-scale infrastructure? If so, consider this role as Director, Software Engineering – Storage Services. The Director of Software Engineering – Storage Services is a visionary and dynamic leader responsible for overseeing the strategy, design, development, implementation, and operation of large-scale storage systems and services in our private cloud.

This pivotal role will drive the evolution and modernization of storage solutions, ensuring exceptional reliability, performance, and security for customers and internal stakeholders. The Director will work closely with senior stakeholders and product leaders to define the strategic direction of our storage services portfolio. The successful candidate will demonstrate extensive technical expertise in distributed storage, strong leadership skills, and a proven commitment to innovation and operational excellence.

Responsibilities:

• Define and communicate a bold vision and strategy for Storage Services to align with company goals and evolving storage industry trends.
• Drive the long-term technical roadmap to ensure scalable, reliable, and high-performing storage architectures at the lowest cost possible that meet business needs.
• Champion best practices, innovation, and continuous improvement across all storage engineering initiatives.
• Lead, mentor, and inspire a diverse team of software engineers and managers, fostering a culture of collaboration, learning, and accountability.
• Attract, retain, and develop top engineering talent through effective hiring, coaching, and growth opportunities.
• Set clear objectives, provide regular feedback, and ensure the professional growth and performance of team members.
• Guide the architecture, design, and development of robust, secure, and scalable storage services (e.g., block, file, object storage solutions).
• Operate a large-scale open source Ceph storage installation base.
• Assess and implement new technologies, frameworks, and methodologies in the storage domain to drive down costs.
• Oversee effective code quality practices, testing, code reviews, and automation pipelines.
• Drive the execution and timely delivery of complex storage services projects with high quality and reliability.
• Collaborate with Product Management, SRE, QA, Security, and other cross-functional teams to establish requirements and fulfill product commitments.
• Establish and monitor KPIs to measure the success, reliability, and customer satisfaction of delivered services.
• Ensure the availability, scalability, and performance of production storage services with a proactive approach to incident prevention and resolution.
• Lead root-cause analysis efforts and drive continuous improvements in operational processes and tooling.
• Establish robust monitoring, alerting, and disaster recovery strategies.
• Champion the implementation of security best practices and compliance requirements across all storage solutions.
• Work with Security and Compliance teams to ensure that all storage systems meet industry and regulatory standards.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for executive leadership and key business partners regarding all storage engineering matters.
• Communicate complex technical topics clearly and effectively to non-technical audiences.
• Advocate for customer needs, balancing technical constraints and business objectives.

Qualifications:

• Proven experience leading globally distributed engineering teams.
• Demonstrated ability to hire, mentor, and develop world-class engineering talent.
• Track record of driving operational excellence, customer obsession, and an agile mindset.
• Experience leading large-scale systems in fast-paced environments with a strong sense of ownership and urgency.
• Extensive experience operating large-scale, multi-tenant cloud storage solutions such as Ceph, Pure, Vast, or Netapp.
• Expertise in open source Ceph is highly desirable.
• Experience with public cloud technologies (e.g., GCP, Azure), Kubernetes, container storage interfaces (CSI), and orchestration in cloud-native environments.
• Strong background in performance optimization, capacity planning, cost management, and automation for storage services.
• Proficiency in infrastructure components including networking, compute, virtualization (OpenStack), DNS, and load balancers.
• Deep understanding of distributed and clustered systems, cloud deployments (scaling, resiliency, load balancing), and service monitoring (KPI, SLA, disaster recovery).
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, agile methodologies, and Linux ecosystem, including automation and system monitoring tools.
• Experience with capacity/performance management, monitoring, and tuning.
• Participation in industry standards organizations or open-source communities is an advantage.
• Excellent verbal and written communication abilities across all organizational levels, including executive leadership, peers, and subordinates.
• Adept at communicating complex technical topics to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science or a related field (or equivalent work experience), with 15+ years in IT infrastructure and 10+ years specializing in cloud and storage technologies.