Backend Software Development Engineer – Expert

Function

Our Company

We’re Hitachi Vantara, the data foundation trusted by the world’s innovators. Our resilient, high-performance data infrastructure means that customers - from banks to theme parks ­- can focus on achieving the incredible with data.

If you’ve seen the Las Vegas Sphere, you’ve seen just one example of how we empower businesses to automate, optimize, innovate - and wow their customers. Right now, we’re laying the foundation for our next wave of growth. We’re looking for people who love being part of a diverse, global team - and who get excited about making a real-world impact with data.

Job description

About the team

We build the object storage that AI-era workloads need. Our products help customers in regulated industries like finance, healthcare and legal store, protect and access huge amounts of data. The Object backend team owns the core of the platform: the S3 data path, metadata and database services, replication, data protection, and the distributed services that run large clusters.

Role overview

We're looking for a senior backend engineer to lead the architecture and evolution of our core storage services. You'll design and build high-throughput, fault-tolerant server-side systems that work at multi-petabyte and billion-object scale. You'll own complex subsystems from start to finish, set backend engineering standards, mentor senior engineers, and be a go-to technical expert for Product Management, QE, Support and Services.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, design and implementation of core backend services: the S3 request and data path, metadata management, indexing, garbage collection and background services.
• Design distributed, highly available systems with clear consistency, durability and failure-handling guarantees.
• Own the scalability and performance of the data and metadata layers. Profile, tune and remove bottlenecks in throughput, latency and IOPS-heavy workloads.
• Drive the evolution of database and messaging layers, such as PostgreSQL upgrades and tuning, distributed SQL (YugabyteDB), and RabbitMQ-based async processing.
• Design and improve replication, disaster recovery and data integrity features (multi-site replication, failover/recovery, checksum verification).
• Implement S3 API features and compliance, including versioning, Object Lock/WORM, lifecycle policies and multipart upload.
• Lead backend modernization work: runtime and language migrations (for example Python 3), containerization and Kubernetes-based services, and observability with Prometheus and Grafana.
• Act as the final escalation point for critical production issues. Lead root cause analysis for problems like JVM heap exhaustion, session or resource leaks, deadlocks and data availability issues, and deliver lasting fixes.
• Work with security teams to fix CVEs and harden backend services (encryption at rest and in transit, key management and rekeying, authentication and authorization).
• Set backend standards for API design, code quality, design reviews, testing and CI/CD, and mentor Senior and Specialist engineers across locations.

Required qualifications

• BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or a related field.
• 12+ years of backend or systems software development, with a strong record of architecting and shipping enterprise-grade distributed systems.
• Expert-level Java skills, including JVM internals, garbage collection tuning, and heap and thread dump analysis. Strong skills in Go and/or Python.
• Deep knowledge of concurrency, multithreading, networking, data structures and algorithms on Linux.
• Proven experience designing distributed systems: consensus/replication, partitioning, consistency models and fault tolerance.
• Strong hands-on experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL preferred), including schema design, query optimization and upgrades.
• Experience building and scaling RESTful/HTTP services and asynchronous, message-driven architectures.
• Excellent communication skills, and experience leading technical work across globally distributed teams.

Preferred qualifications

• Deep storage domain experience: object storage internals, the S3 API, file or block storage, SAN.
• Experience with erasure coding or RAID, data deduplication or compression, and data integrity (MD5/SHA256).
• Experience with Yuga byte DB or other distributed SQL/NoSQL databases, and RabbitMQ or Kafka.
• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes, and with moving monolithic services to cloud-native microservices.
• Experience with observability tools such as Prometheus and Grafana, and with designing operational metrics and telemetry.
• Knowledge of security practices: encryption, KMIP key management, identity and access management, and secure SDLC.
• Experience with GitLab CI/CD and automated testing at the unit, integration and system levels.
• Patents, publications or open-source contributions in storage or distributed systems.

What success looks like

• Core services meet scale, performance and reliability targets on large production clusters.
• Critical escalations and backend defect backlog go down measurably, and root cause analyses lead to fixes that stop the issue from coming back.
• Modernization milestones (database, runtime, telemetry upgrades) ship on plan without hurting stability.
• Your designs become standards other teams adopt, and the engineers you mentor grow into technical leaders.

Why join us

You'll build the core of mission-critical storage trusted by many of the world's largest enterprises. You'll have real influence on architecture and product direction, in a collaborative and inclusive culture that values innovation and respect.

About us

We’re a global team of innovators. Together, we harness engineering excellence and passion for insight to co-create meaningful solutions to complex challenges. We turn organizations into data-driven leaders that can a make positive impact on their industries and society. If you believe that innovation can inspire the future, this is the place to fulfil your purpose and achieve your potential.

Fostering innovation through diverse perspectives

Hitachi is a global company operating across a wide range of industries and regions. One of the things that sets Hitachi apart is the diversity of our business and people, which drives our innovation and growth.

We are committed to building an inclusive culture based on mutual respect and merit-based systems. We believe that when people feel valued, heard, and safe to express themselves, they do their best work.

How we look after you

We help take care of your today and tomorrow with industry-leading benefits, support, and services that look after your holistic health and wellbeing. We’re also champions of life balance and offer flexible arrangements that work for you (role and location dependent). We’re always looking for new ways of working that bring out our best, which leads to unexpected ideas. So here, you’ll experience a sense of belonging, and discover autonomy, freedom, and ownership as you work alongside talented people you enjoy sharing knowledge with.

We’re proud to say we’re an equal opportunity employer and welcome all applicants for employment without attention to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran, age, disability status or any other protected characteristic. Should you need reasonable accommodations during the recruitment process, please let us know so that we can do our best to set you up for success.