Contract Software Engineering Manager Jobs in Raleigh, NC

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. 

We are looking for an experienced Software Engineering Manager to lead a team of talented engineers building next-generation storage infrastructure. In this role, you will own the technical strategy, delivery, and operational excellence of large-scale distributed storage systems. You will guide the team through complex architectural decisions, foster a high-performing culture, and partner closely with product, infrastructure, and leadership teams to deliver reliable, high-availability solutions for data-intensive workloads.

• Lead and grow a team of senior and principal engineers focused on distributed storage systems, including hiring top talent, mentoring, career development, and performance management.
• Define and drive the technical roadmap for storage platforms, balancing innovation, scalability, reliability, and delivery velocity.
• Oversee system design and architecture reviews, ensuring solutions meet requirements for high availability, fault tolerance, performance, and scalability in distributed environments.
• Partner with product management and stakeholders to translate business needs into technical priorities and executable plans.
• Establish engineering best practices, processes, and metrics to improve team productivity, code quality, and system reliability.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with infrastructure, data, and platform teams to align on shared goals and resolve dependencies.
• Manage project execution, including scoping, resourcing, risk mitigation, and on-time delivery of major initiatives.
• Represent the team in leadership forums, communicate progress and challenges clearly, and advocate for necessary resources.
• Troubleshoot critical production issues when needed and drive post-mortem processes to prevent recurrence.

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 5+ years in an engineering management role leading teams of 8+ engineers.
• Proven track record of managing backend or infrastructure teams that shipped large-scale distributed systems in production.
• Strong technical foundation in system design, distributed systems (consistency, consensus, replication, partitioning, CAP theorem), and high-availability architectures.
• Experience overseeing storage system development or operations, including:
  • Parallel filesystems (e.g., Lustre, GPFS/IBM Spectrum Scale, BeeGFS) and/or
  • Object storage systems (e.g., Ceph, S3-compatible APIs, MinIO, OpenStack Swift).
• Familiarity with management and orchestration frameworks (e.g., Kubernetes, Slurm, Mesos, or similar resource managers).
• Demonstrated success building and retaining high-performing teams in fast-paced environments.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills, with experience presenting to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience with agile methodologies, OKRs/KPIs, and modern engineering practices (CI/CD, observability, incident management).

• Direct experience in High Performance Computing (HPC) environments or scientific computing workloads.
• Previous contributions to or deep operational knowledge of open-source storage projects (e.g., Ceph, Lustre).
• Background in cloud-native storage, multi-region deployments, or hybrid cloud architectures.
• Experience scaling teams through organizational growth or restructuring.
• Hands-on expertise in performance optimization and benchmarking of petabyte-scale storage systems.

Salary Range for this role: $185,000 - $235,000

Join our dynamic and driven team, where engineering excellence is at the heart of everything we do. We seek individuals who love to challenge themselves and are fueled by curiosity. Here, you'll have the opportunity to work across various areas of the company, thanks to our flat organizational structure that encourages hands-on involvement and direct contributions to our mission. Leadership is earned by those who take initiative and consistently deliver outstanding results, both in their work ethic and deliverables, making strong prioritization skills essential. Additionally, we value strong communication skills in all our engineers and researchers, as they are crucial for the success of our teams and the company as a whole.

Interview Process: After submitting your application, one of our recruiters will review your resume. If your application passes this stage, you will be invited to a 30-minute interview during which a member of our team will ask some basic questions. If you clear the interview, you will enter the main process, which can consist of up to four interviews in total:

• Coding assessment: Often in a language of your choice.
• Systems design: Translate high-level requirements into a scalable, fault-tolerant service (depending on role).
• Real-time problem-solving: Demonstrate practical skills in a live problem-solving session.
• Meet and greet with the wider team.
• Our goal is to finish the main process in 2-3 weeks at most.

DataDirect Networks (DDN) 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.

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