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Explore roles where you can make measurable impact, keep learning, and collaborate with high-performing teams.

Sr. Software Engineer (Systems Engineering, C/C++)

Morrisville, North Carolina, United States; Waltham, Massachusetts, United States; San Jose, California, United States

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Overview

At NetApp, our High Achievement Principles shape how we work: we innovate to elevate, drive results, and excel as a team. We have a history of helping customers turn challenges into business opportunities. As part of our sales organization, your role will require a strategic blend of technical acumen and charismatic client engagement, ensuring that every partnership is nurtured towards its maximum potential. As a pivotal link between NetApp and our clients, your contributions will directly influence the growth and direction of our department, making a lasting impact on the organization's success. This is more than a job—it's a chance to be part of a team that values innovation, supports professional growth, and celebrates shared victories.

Success profile

Ready to be an engineer at NetApp? Explore the traits that can help you thrive.

  • Analytical
  • Adaptable
  • Communicator
  • Detail-oriented
  • Quick-thinking
  • Problem solver

Responsibilities

Morrisville, North Carolina, United States; Waltham, Massachusetts, United States; San Jose, California, United States Job category: Software Engineering Job ID: 135973-en_US

Own Every Moment at NetApp

At NetApp, your ideas power innovation. We lead in intelligent data infrastructure—delivering unified storage, integrated data services, and solutions that help organizations unlock the full potential of their data, from AI to multicloud.

Ready to innovate and contribute to our path to $10B? Here, you'll collaborate with passionate teams, tackle real-world challenges, and see your impact in how customers transform and grow. If you're ready to bring curiosity, creativity, and drive to every moment, NetApp is where your journey begins. Join teams that innovate to elevate, drive results, and excel together across every function.

Job Summary

NetApp is seeking a highly experienced Senior Software Development Engineer to help lead innovation across cloud infrastructure, software-defined storage, virtualization, and distributed systems technologies. This role is responsible for driving the design and execution of foundational infrastructure capabilities that power NetApp’s cloud-native storage and data management services across hyperscaler cloud environments.

As an Senior Software Engineer, you will apply broad and deep expertise across multiple specialized disciplines including distributed systems, Linux systems software, storage architecture, networking infrastructure, and virtualization technologies. You will contribute to significant technical initiatives spanning multiple products, teams, and partner organizations while influencing architecture, execution, scalability, and operational excellence across the organization.

This role requires strong technical leadership, advanced systems thinking, and the ability to identify challenges and blockers early while navigating complex technical and organizational constraints to deliver impactful outcomes.

Responsibilities

  • Lead the design and development of scalable, resilient, and high-performance infrastructure components across storage, networking, virtualization, and Linux systems layers. 
  • Drive architecture and technical direction for major subsystems within software-defined storage, virtualization infrastructure, and distributed cloud platforms. 
  • Contribute to significant portions of the product across multiple technical domains and projects while coordinating execution across stakeholders and partner teams. 
  • Architect and optimize storage and networking data paths for performance, scalability, reliability, and operational efficiency in cloud-scale environments. 
  • Provide technical leadership across virtualization technologies including KVM/QEMU, hypervisor integrations, virtual networking, storage virtualization, and infrastructure orchestration. 
  • Drive engineering excellence through strong design practices, observability, scalability, reliability, automation, and operational readiness. 
  • Lead resolution of highly complex technical challenges involving distributed systems, virtualization, cloud infrastructure, and enterprise storage technologies. 
  • Influence technical direction across organizations through architecture reviews, technical mentoring, design leadership, and cross-functional collaboration. 
  • Establish effective technical collaboration models across engineering teams and partner organizations to drive alignment and execution. 
  • Mentor engineers and help scale organizational engineering capability through technical guidance and leadership. 
  • Evaluate emerging technologies and industry trends in cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, storage, and virtualization platforms. 

Job Requirements

  • 12+ years of experience in systems software engineering, distributed infrastructure platforms, virtualization, storage systems, or cloud infrastructure development. 
  • Expert-level programming skills in C/C++ with strong proficiency in Python. 
  • Deep expertise in Linux operating systems internals, kernel technologies, systems architecture, concurrency, memory management, and performance engineering. 
  • Significant experience designing and building distributed storage systems, software-defined infrastructure platforms, or cloud-native infrastructure services. 
  • Deep expertise with virtualization stacks including KVM/QEMU, virtio, hypervisors, virtual storage, and virtual networking technologies. 
  • Strong experience with storage and networking subsystems, kernel development, or device driver development.
  • Deep understanding of distributed systems architecture, scalability, fault tolerance, reliability engineering, and operational excellence. 
  • Strong operational expertise with hyperscaler cloud platforms including AWS, Azure, GCP, or OCI. 
  • Proven ability to lead large cross-functional technical initiatives and influence engineering outcomes across organizations. 
  • Exceptional debugging, systems analysis, and performance optimization capabilities. 
  • Strong communication, technical leadership, and stakeholder management skills. 
  • Demonstrated ability to independently solve highly complex technical challenges with broad organizational impact. 

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience architecting enterprise-scale storage operating systems such as ONTAP or similar platforms. 
  • Experience driving large-scale infrastructure modernization or platform transformation initiatives. 
  • Contributions to open-source systems software, kernel, virtualization, storage, or cloud infrastructure ecosystems. 
  • Recognized technical expertise in cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, virtualization, or storage platforms. 
  • Advanced cloud certifications or equivalent industry-recognized expertise. 

Education

  • Bachelors or Masters Degree in computer scicnece or similar field is preferred. 

Compensation:
The target salary range for this position is 196,350 - 292,600 USD. The salary offered will be determined by the candidate's location, qualifications, experience, and education and may be outside of this range. Final compensation packages are competitive and in line with industry standards, reflecting a variety of factors, and include a comprehensive benefits package. This may cover Health Insurance, Life Insurance, Retirement or Pension Plans, Paid Time Off, various Leave options, Performance-Based Incentives, employee stock purchase plan, and/or restricted stocks (RSU’s), with all offerings subject to regional variations and governed by local laws, regulations, and company policies. Benefits may vary by country and region, and further details will be provided as part of the recruitment process. 

At NetApp, we embrace a hybrid working environment designed to strengthen connection, collaboration, and culture for all employees. This means that most roles will have some level of in-office and/or in-person expectations, which will be shared during the recruitment process.

Equal Opportunity Employer:

NetApp is firmly committed to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and to compliance with all federal, state and local laws that prohibit employment discrimination based on age, race, color, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, disability or genetic information, pregnancy, protected veteran status, and any other protected classification.

Why You'll Thrive at NetApp

At NetApp, you won't wait for the perfect moment—you'll make it. The early planning, the extra thought, the bold idea that turns good into great: That's how our people operate and how we continue to push the boundaries of data infrastructure.

NetApp is the trusted partner for organizations transforming data into opportunity. As the only enterprise-grade storage service natively embedded in Google Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft Azure, we empower customers to run everything from traditional workloads to enterprise AI with unmatched performance, resilience, and security.

Our culture

We celebrate mold breakers, bold thinkers, and problem solvers. We reward initiative, impact, and ownership. We provide flexibility so you can balance professional ambition with your personal life. Here, differences are not just welcomed—they drive everything we do.

If you're ready to innovate, rise to the challenge, and own every moment - make your next move your best one. Apply now.

Submitting an Application

To ensure a streamlined and fair hiring process for all candidates, our team only reviews applications submitted through our company website. This practice allows us to track, assess, and respond to applicants efficiently. Emailing our employees, recruiters, or Human Resources personnel directly will not influence your application.

AI Disclosure

For select roles, some stages of our hiring process may use artificial intelligence tools to help evaluate applications and candidate selection. These tools support—rather than replace—human decision-making.


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Our values

Put the customer at the center. Care for each other and our communities. Think and act like owners. Build belonging every day. Embrace a growth mindset.

Benefits

Volunteer time off

40 hours of paid volunteer time each year.

Well-being

Employee Assistance Program, fitness, and mental health resources to help employees be their best.

Time away

Paid time off for vacation and to recharge.

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Equal Opportunity Employer*

NetApp is firmly committed to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and to compliance with all federal, state and local laws that prohibit employment discrimination based on age, race, color, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, disability or genetic information, pregnancy, protected veteran status and any other protected classification. We pledge to take every reasonable step to ensure that our applicants and employees are respected, treated fairly and with dignity. See the EEO poster, Know your rights poster, and NetApp EEO policy. NetApp makes reasonable accommodations, consistent with applicable laws, for religious purposes and for the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified applicant or employee with a disability, who can perform the essential job functions unless undue hardship would result.

State-specific postings/notices to applicants regarding contract compliance can be found here in English and here in Spanish, and fair employment practice information can be found here.

Reasonable Accommodations

At NetApp, we are committed to fostering an inclusive and accessible workplace where individuals with disabilities can thrive. In alignment with our values, NetApp provides reasonable accommodations and adjustments where possible to qualified applicants and employees with disabilities, in accordance with employment rights and regulations relevant to their country of employment, to ensure equal access to employment opportunities and job performance.

Applicants who would like to request an accommodation or adjustment are encouraged to Contact Us. Each request will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, in accordance with applicable laws and our commitment to equity and belonging within our culture, values and business practices. Requests will be handled confidentially and respectfully, and we will work collaboratively to identify effective solutions.

  • For reasonable accommodations in Germany, click here.
  • For reasonable accommodations in France, click here.
  • For reasonable accommodations in The Netherlands, click here.

Please note that we do not accept unsolicited resumes to the above email address.

Data privacy

We care about your privacy and, therefore, ask that you read our Candidate Privacy Notice before you submit any personal information to us.

NetApp does not carry out any solely automated decision making (i.e. the process of making a decision by automated means without any human involvement) in determining your suitability or eligibility for specific roles.

However, the processing of your personal information is carried out with the aid of manual and automated tools. In particular, NetApp may use an automated employment evaluation tool or similar tool as one of several tools, actions, and/or steps to assist with NetApp’s review of candidate applications for various hiring needs.

Currently, when addressing certain hiring needs, NetApp uses the following tools: 

  • Eightfold (eightfold.ai): This tool can provide an initial ranking of a candidate’s skills and experience, based on information provided by the applicant in the application and/or supporting documentation, in comparison to the NetApp designated key requirements of a specific role. Additionally, the tool may be used to help review and/or rank internal employees seeking promotion or other internal mobility. An independent audit of the Eightfold Matching Model tool can be found at https://eightfold.ai/nyc-eightfoldmatching-model
  • Findem (findem.ai): This tool is used to help identify candidates whose skills and experience may be relevant to open roles at NetApp, using publicly available professional information. Findem may also be used to assist with candidate matching, AI-assisted screening, and recruitment communications. 

Our talent acquisition team or our recruiters will ultimately select the candidates for further consideration, following human review of any automated evaluation results and associated underlying documentation (or lack thereof) submitted with the candidates’ application. 

Candidates may request an alternative selection process which will not be subject to the Eightfold matching tool or to any electronic automated employment evaluation by contacting NetApp at careers@netapp.com. To bypass the Eightfold matching tool or any electronic automated employment evaluation, you must include a resume and job ID with your email to careers@netapp.com and you must include in the subject line of your email: Data Privacy Request. Candidates who have questions or want to request additional information on the source of data, type of data, and/or collection of data related to the candidate review process should contact NetApp at careers@netapp.com

Note: Eightfold is not applicable to temporary hiring opportunities. If you are interested in temporary roles, you can apply via a third-party site managed by our preferred supplier, Magnit Global. Magnit Global will provide its own privacy disclosures for your review as part of the application process.

Submitting an application

To ensure a streamlined and fair hiring process for all candidates, our team reviews apcplications submitted through our company website only. This practice allows us to track, assess, and respond to applicants efficiently. Emailing our employees, recruiters, or Human Resources personnel directly will not influence your application.

AI Disclosure

For select roles, some stages of our hiring process may use AI-powered tools to assist with tasks such as identifying relevant candidates, matching skills and experience to role requirements, and conducting initial screenings. These tools support - rather than replace - human decision-making. To learn more, please see our AI Transparency Statement. If you would prefer not to engage with an AI-assisted process, you can request an alternative by contacting careers@netapp.com. Choosing an alternative process will not impact your candidacy in any way.