Role overview

Portworx, part of Pure Storage, is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly with strategic customers during critical Kubernetes storage deployments. You will serve as the technical liaison between customer infrastructure teams and Portworx, focusing on architecting solutions, validating designs, and providing advisory guidance that shapes both immediate deployments and long-term product direction.

Key responsibilities

Design and review production Portworx architectures for complex environments including bare metal and virtualized on-premises estates, multi-cluster topologies, disaster recovery setups, and hybrid cloud deployments.
Evaluate customer infrastructure design against their actual compute, storage fabric, hypervisor, and network capabilities to identify where proposed architectures will or will not succeed.
Guide technical decisions on storage class design, KVDB topology, snapshot and backup policies, replication modes, and capacity planning that determine production readiness.
Advise customer infrastructure and platform teams on the layers underlying Portworx, including LUN presentation, multipath configuration, LVM layout, HBA and NIC settings, network bonding, and hypervisor datastore decisions.
Validate architecture patterns in a lab environment before on-site engagement to ensure recommendations are tested rather than theoretical.
Define and execute failure-mode and performance validation plans before production go-live, including node loss, fabric failure, network partition, and upgrade scenarios.
Serve as the senior technical voice during critical rollouts and live escalations, directing diagnosis and coordinating with Support and Engineering as needed.
Create reference architectures, runbooks, and decision frameworks that become reusable across multiple engagements.
Build long-term relationships with customer platform organizations by understanding their broader strategic direction and positioning yourself as a trusted advisor beyond the Portworx scope.
Conduct periodic visits to established accounts to maintain relationships, identify evolving needs, and surface expansion opportunities.
Capture and structure field feedback on bugs, feature gaps, and roadmap signals for Product and Engineering teams.

Requirements

Deep operational experience with storage infrastructure, including Fibre Channel and IP storage fabrics, LUN presentation, multipath, and array-level design.
Hands-on expertise with virtualization platforms and their datastore, passthrough, and performance characteristics.
Strong knowledge of server architecture, HBA configuration, network design, and how these layers interact with Kubernetes deployments.
Demonstrated ability to diagnose and troubleshoot complex infrastructure problems across multiple technology layers.
Experience advising senior engineering and architecture leaders on infrastructure strategy and platform direction.
Proven capability to own engagements end-to-end, from validation through design, production readiness, and customer handoff.

What makes this role worth considering

This position offers the opportunity to work with Pure Storage’s most strategic customers during their highest-impact infrastructure initiatives. You will directly influence both customer success and Portworx product direction through structured field feedback and real-world validation. The role is based in Santa Clara, Chicago, or New York, with an expectation to work primarily in-office, and includes travel to customer sites for critical engagements.