Sr. Staff Engineer - Data Path

Job description

The **Sr. Staff Engineer - Data Path** is a senior individual contributor responsible for designing, developing, and optimizing performance-critical data path components within a distributed storage and data services platform. This role focuses on the efficient movement of data through complex software systems, with an emphasis on scalability, reliability, and low-latency performance. As a technical leader within the Infinia Engineering group, this engineer operates with broad architectural influence, partners closely with cross-functional teams, and drives best practices across the data path stack while remaining hands-on in design and implementation. ## **Key Responsibilities** ## **Data Path Architecture & Development** - Design, implement, and optimize core data path components in large-scale, distributed systems. - Contribute to system architecture decisions affecting performance, throughput, latency, and resource utilization. - Develop high-quality, maintainable code for performance-critical paths, primarily in systems-level languages (e.g., C/C++). ## **Performance & Scalability** - Analyze and optimize data movement across CPU, memory, storage, and network layers. - Identify performance bottlenecks and drive solutions through profiling, benchmarking, and tuning. - Establish performance baselines and contribute to regression detection and prevention strategies. ## **Technical Leadership** - Act as a technical authority within the data path domain, influencing designs across teams. - Lead design reviews and provide guidance on complex technical challenges. - Mentor senior and mid-level engineers on systems design, performance engineering, and best practices. ## **Cross-Functional Collaboration** - Work closely with adjacent engineering teams, including platform, infrastructure, and quality engineering. - Partner with Product Management to ensure technical feasibility and performance considerations are reflected in roadmap planning. - Support downstream teams (e.g., solutions, customer engineering) as a subject matter expert when needed. ## **Quality & Operational Excellence** - Promote best practices in code quality, testing, observability, and documentation. - Participate in incident analysis and resolution related to data path behavior in production environments. - Contribute to long-term technical strategy and continuous improvement initiatives. ## **Required Qualifications** - Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent experience). - 12+ years of experience in systems software, distributed systems, or infrastructure engineering. - Strong experience designing and implementing performance-critical software components. - Proficiency in C/C++ or similar systems programming languages. - Solid understanding of operating systems fundamentals, concurrency, memory management, and networking concepts. - Proven ability to work independently on complex technical problems and influence system-level outcomes.