Job Summary
About the Role
We are looking for a Lead DevOps Engineer to own the deployment, reliability, and operational tooling for DDN Control Plane — a multi-tenant control-plane platform built on Go microservices (the Platform Core foundation plus domain services including Control Plane, Control Store, and Augmented Support) that must run reliably across on-premises, air-gapped, and hosted/SaaS environments.
This is a hands-on leadership role. You will set infrastructure architecture, build and operate the Kubernetes, CI/CD, and observability foundation the team relies on, and actively apply AI tooling and agentic workflows to reduce operational toil. You will partner closely with development, QA, and product teams to ship dependable systems at scale.
Key Responsibilities
- Own the Kubernetes + Helm deployment architecture for Control Plane's Go-based microservices (core, Control Plane-ctrl, Control Plane-store, augmented-support), supporting on-premises, air-gapped, and SaaS deployment models.
- Design and maintain CI/CD pipelines for build, test, security scanning, and release of containerized services.
- Build and operate the observability stack: structured logging (Fluent Bit → S3), OpenTelemetry tracing, metrics, and alerting.
- Manage NATS cluster infrastructure (core and JetStream) supporting inter-service messaging, including account and permission configuration.
- Own secrets management (Kubernetes Secrets, key rotation) and enforce FIPS 140-3 compliant cryptography and TLS configuration across services.
- Partner with engineering teams to define infrastructure-as-code (Helm charts, GitOps) and automate provisioning across environments.
- Drive reliability practices — SLOs, incident response, capacity planning, and disaster recovery — for a multi-tenant control plane.
- Champion and operationalize AI-assisted tooling to automate operational toil such as triage, deployment validation, and incident response.
- Ensure secure, least-privilege access across clusters, S3-compatible object storage (Infinia S3), and CI/CD systems.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with QA, development, release, and product to ensure reliable, scalable, and compliant delivery.
- Maintain clear documentation of infrastructure, runbooks, and operational decisions.
Required Skills & Experience
- Proven experience owning Kubernetes-based infrastructure in production at scale (Helm, GitOps, multi-environment deployments).
- Strong background building CI/CD pipelines for containerized, microservice-based systems.
- Hands-on coding/scripting ability (Go, Python, or Bash) for automation and tooling; able to lead by example in code.
- Experience with observability stacks — structured logging, distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry), and metrics/alerting.
- Experience operating message-broker or service-mesh infrastructure (NATS, Kafka, Istio, or similar) in production.
- Solid grounding in security fundamentals — secrets management, TLS, and compliance frameworks such as FIPS 140-3.
- Experience supporting hybrid, on-premises, or air-gapped deployment models in addition to cloud/SaaS.
- Demonstrated use of AI tooling to improve operational efficiency and engineering processes.
- Excellent communication, collaboration, and documentation skills.
Nice to Have
- Direct experience with NATS (core and JetStream).
- Experience with S3-compatible object storage systems (e.g., MinIO, Infinia).
- Domain knowledge in storage or high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure.
- Experience operating in regulated or FIPS-compliant environments (government, financial services).
- Familiarity with multi-tenant SaaS platform operations.
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.
