Job Summary and Duties:
We are seeking a highly experienced Principal Software Engineer to provide senior technical
leadership for the StorNext sustaining engineering team. This role is responsible for driving
resolution of complex field escalations, sustaining and modernizing StorNext Storage Manager
and related filesystem components, advancing platform compatibility with current operating
system releases, and strengthening the build, test, and deployment infrastructure used across
engineering. The ideal
candidate will bring deep systems-level expertise, strong ownership, and the ability to operate
independently across customer support, product engineering, QA, and release operations.
Specific duties include but are not limited to:
StorNext Sustaining Engineering Leadership: Serve as a senior technical owner for StorNext
software in production, with primary responsibility for Storage Manager and supporting
responsibility for StorNext filesystem-related issues, including:
▪ Lead root-cause analysis and resolution of complex customer escalations, including
crash dumps, field logs, and difficult-to-reproduce production issues.
▪ Partner with Product Management and senior engineering stakeholders to evaluate
feature requests, technical feasibility, risk, and long-term maintainability.
▪ Drive platform modernization efforts required to support new major Red Hat, Linux
distribution, Windows, and other operating system releases.
▪ Own and provide technical direction for critical legacy and sustaining components,
including:
▪ snauditlogs
▪ TSM/MSM
▪ Legacy GUI (Java code)
▪ Third-party packages
• Engineering Environment and VM Template Ownership: Architect, build, and maintain
the VM templates and engineering environments used for development, build, and test
workflows, including:
▪ Track, assess, and plan support for new Linux and Windows releases used across
development, build, qualification, and customer environments.
▪ Create new VM templates for Linux (Alma, Oracle, Rocky, RedHat, Debian, Ubuntu,
SLES) and Windows 11
Modernize, troubleshoot, and maintain deployment automation written in PHP, Perl, and
related scripting technologies.
▪ Resolve package manager, installation, networking, OS compatibility, and configuration
issues across supported templates.
▪ Offline File Manager (OFM) Technical Ownership: Act as the senior technical authority
for OFM support, maintenance, and knowledge transfer, including:
▪ Evaluate, debug, and resolve complex customer-reported OFM issues with a focus on
quality, reliability, and long-term supportability.
▪ Design and implement OFM enhancements requested by Product Management while
balancing customer impact, technical debt, and release risk.
▪ Mentor QA engineers and developers on OFM architecture, operational behavior,
troubleshooting methods, and best practices.
▪ Build Infrastructure and Release Enablement: Own and evolve the build infrastructure
that supports StorNext engineering and release workflows, including:
▪ Create, configure, and maintain VMs for new build machines and sustaining engineering
environments.
▪ Integrate packages, build systems, and automation workflows with Jenkins and related
continuous integration infrastructure.
▪ Customer and Cross-Functional Escalation Support: Engage directly with customers,
▪ Support, QA, Product Management, and Engineering leadership to clarify issues,
communicate technical findings, and drive resolution of high-impact escalations.
Required Qualifications:
• 8+ years of professional systems software development experience using C and/or C++.
• Deep Linux systems experience across Red Hat and Debian/Ubuntu variants, including
installation, packaging, networking, services, and OS-level troubleshooting.
• Expert-level programming experience in C and C++ (C++11/C++17), with strong Python
scripting and automation skills.
• Advanced debugging skills using GDB, system logs, core files, crash dumps, and other
production diagnostic artifacts.
• Proven ability to perform root-cause analysis on complex, multi-process, distributed, or timing
sensitive software failures.
• Strong understanding of build systems, compiler behavior, linker errors, dependency
management, and release engineering workflows.
• Experience designing, debugging, and sustaining multi-process systems, inter-process
communication, and long-running services.
• Practical experience using AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code,
including:
◦ MEMORY.md
◦ Skills
◦ MCP servers
◦ Multi-agent development
• Experience working in Scrum or similar agile development environments, with the maturity to balance planned work, escalation response, and release commitments
Preferred Qualifications:
• Windows and Mac development experience, especially in mixed-platform engineering or
customer environments.
• Experience with RPC, TCP, and other inter-process or distributed communication
mechanisms.
• Additional language experience with Objective-C, Perl, PHP, Java, Assembly, JSON, or similar
technologies used in legacy enterprise software environments.
• Networking, authentication, and directory services knowledge, including SSSD and Active
Directory integration.
Ideal Candidate:
The ideal candidate is a senior, hands-on systems engineer who can operate as a technical
owner across sustaining engineering, customer escalation support, build infrastructure, and
legacy platform modernization. This person should be comfortable moving from low-level
debugging to architecture discussions, from customer-facing issue resolution to mentoring QA
and development teams, and from urgent field escalations to long-term improvements in
reliability and maintainability. We recognize that few candidates will bring every skill listed; we
are looking for deep technical strength, strong ownership, mature judgment, and the ability to
quickly ramp into complex enterprise storage software.
KeyWords
• Linux
• C/C++
• StorNext
• Storage Manager
• Customer Support