Director, Storage & Backup Engineering

Role: Director, Storage & Backup Engineering

Location: Milpitas / Irvine, CA Hybrid

Employment Type: Contract to hire

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced Director, Storage & Backup Engineering to lead the strategy, architecture, engineering, operations, and continuous improvement of enterprise storage, backup, and data protection environments.

The ideal candidate will have deep hands-on and leadership experience with Dell storage technologies and Rubrik, along with a strong understanding of enterprise data protection, disaster recovery, infrastructure resiliency, and large-scale storage environments.

This leader will be responsible for developing the organization's storage and backup strategy, leading engineering teams, driving modernization initiatives, and ensuring highly available, secure, scalable, and recoverable infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the overall strategy, architecture, engineering, and operations for enterprise storage, backup, and data protection environments.
• Provide technical leadership for Dell storage platforms, including enterprise SAN/NAS environments and associated storage technologies.
• Lead the design, implementation, and optimization of Rubrik backup, recovery, and data protection solutions.
• Develop and maintain enterprise strategies for:
• Storage capacity and performance
• Backup and recovery
• Disaster recovery and business continuity
• Data retention and protection
• Ransomware resilience
• Infrastructure modernization
• Lead engineering teams responsible for storage, backup, recovery, and related infrastructure technologies.
• Establish architecture standards, engineering best practices, operational procedures, and technology roadmaps.
• Partner with infrastructure, cloud, security, network, application, and architecture teams to ensure storage and data protection solutions align with enterprise requirements.
• Drive migration and modernization initiatives involving legacy storage and backup platforms.
• Design and implement solutions that support high availability, disaster recovery, backup immutability, and rapid recovery objectives.
• Establish and monitor key performance indicators around storage capacity, availability, backup success, recovery performance, and operational health.
• Lead root-cause analysis and resolution of complex storage and backup incidents.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and make recommendations regarding storage, backup, cloud, and data protection platforms.
• Manage vendor relationships and strategic partnerships, particularly with Dell and Rubrik.
• Develop and manage technology budgets, licensing, capacity planning, and infrastructure investments.
• Ensure infrastructure environments meet enterprise security, compliance, and governance requirements.
• Communicate technical strategy, risks, roadmaps, and investment recommendations to senior IT leadership.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in enterprise infrastructure, storage, backup, or data protection engineering.
• 5+ years in a senior leadership, management, architecture, or engineering leadership role.
• Strong enterprise experience with Dell storage technologies.
• Strong hands-on and architectural experience with Rubrik.
• Deep understanding of enterprise backup and recovery architectures.
• Experience designing and implementing disaster recovery and business continuity solutions.
• Strong understanding of SAN, NAS, block and file storage architectures.
• Experience with storage capacity planning, performance management, replication, and data lifecycle management.
• Experience with backup technologies, recovery objectives, retention policies, immutability, and ransomware protection.
• Experience leading large-scale infrastructure engineering teams and complex technical projects.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure security and data protection best practices.
• Excellent communication, organizational, and stakeholder-management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Dell PowerStore, PowerMax, Unity, PowerScale/Isilon, or related Dell storage platforms.
• Experience with Rubrik Security Cloud (RSC).
• Experience integrating Rubrik with virtualized and physical enterprise environments.
• Experience with VMware and enterprise virtualization platforms.
• Experience with public cloud storage and backup technologies across AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.
• Experience with storage replication and disaster recovery technologies.
• Experience implementing ransomware recovery and cyber-resiliency strategies.
• Experience with automation and infrastructure-as-code technologies.
• Bachelor s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field preferred.

Leadership Competencies

• Strategic and enterprise-level thinking
• Strong technical depth and architectural expertise
• Ability to lead and develop high-performing engineering teams
• Strong vendor and contract management skills
• Excellent communication with both technical and executive audiences
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making abilities
• Ability to manage multiple large-scale initiatives simultaneously
• Strong focus on operational excellence, resiliency, and continuous improvement.