Staff Security Engineer

Sr. Staff Security Architect

DDN is seeking a highly experienced Sr. Staff Security Architect to lead the design and implementation of end-to-end security architecture across distributed storage platforms, including S3-compatible systems, POSIX-compliant file systems, and KV cache–based data services. This is an architecture role focused on working closely with engineering teams across the data path, control plane, and ecosystem/protocol domains to ensure security is deeply embedded across all layers of the platform. You will collaborate with protocol teams, storage engineers, and platform architects to define secure-by-design systems that support high-performance, multi-tenant, and AI-driven workloads. The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in distributed systems security, cryptography, identity frameworks, and storage architectures, with a strong ability to influence engineering design and guide implementation at scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of end-to-end security architecture for distributed storage platforms, including S3-compatible systems, POSIX-compliant file systems, and KV cache–based data services.
• Partner closely with Data Path engineering teams to ensure secure, high-performance data movement across storage tiers, including encryption, integrity validation, and secure I/O handling.
• Lead threat modeling, security reviews, and Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC) practices across the platform.
• Define identity and access management (IAM) integrating enterprise identity providers such as LDAP, Active Directory, OIDC, and Keycloak, supporting SSO, MFA, and federation.
• Architect fine-grained authorization models using RBAC and ABAC across tenants, datasets, and resources.
• Design multi-tenant isolation mechanisms across namespaces, policies, encryption boundaries, and resource quotas, enforcing least privilege and segregation of duties.
• Collaborate with Control Plane teams to define secure APIs, authentication and authorization workflows, policy enforcement, and tenant lifecycle management.
• Work with Protocol and Ecosystem teams to secure S3 and POSIX/NFS interfaces, including request signing, session management, and endpoint security.
• Define and enforce encryption strategies for data at rest and in transit, including tenant-specific keys and dataset-level encryption policies.
• Drive observability and monitoring strategies to detect anomalous behavior, abnormal access patterns, and potential data exfiltration across the platform.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship across cross-functional engineering teams, guiding secure design and implementation practices.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 12+ years of experience in security architecture, infrastructure security, or distributed systems.
• Proven experience designing security for large-scale distributed systems or storage platforms.
• Strong understanding of data path vs. control plane architectures and their security implications.
• Deep expertise in encryption technologies, key management systems, and cryptographic frameworks.
• Experience integrating with external KMS solutions using KMIP or similar protocols.
• Strong knowledge of identity and access management (IAM), including RBAC, ABAC, SSO, MFA, and federation.
• Experience working with enterprise identity providers such as LDAP, Active Directory, and OIDC.
• Familiarity with secure API design, TLS 1.3, mutual TLS, and request signing mechanisms (e.g., SigV4).
• Experience designing multi-tenant systems with strong isolation and policy enforcement.
• Knowledge of logging, auditing, and SIEM integration for security monitoring and compliance.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with protocol, storage, and platform engineering teams.

Preferred Skills

• Experience working with S3, POSIX/NFS, or similar storage protocols from a security architecture perspective.
• Familiarity with KV cache systems, memory tiering, or AI/ML data infrastructure security considerations.
• Hands-on experience with BYOK models and tenant-scoped key management.
• Experience implementing ABAC using metadata, tags, and classification attributes.
• Background in zero trust architecture and distributed system security design.
• Experience with secure deletion techniques, including cryptographic erasure.
• Knowledge of compliance frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST, or FedRAMP.
• Experience designing security for high-performance, low-latency distributed systems.
• Familiarity with anomaly detection, security analytics, and alerting systems.

What You'll Work On

• Defining and driving security architecture across data path, control plane, and protocol layers of distributed storage systems
• Partnering with engineering teams to embed security into S3, POSIX, and KV cache data services
• Building scalable encryption, identity, and access control frameworks for multi-tenant environments
• Strengthening tenant isolation, auditability, and compliance across the platform
• Ensuring secure integration across ecosystem components and external services
• Leading cross-team security initiatives that influence system design, implementation, and long-term platform evolution

Salary Range for this role: $215,000 - $265,000