Principal Systems Software Engineer
San Jose, California, United States; Morrisville, North Carolina, United States
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. That’s because we bring new thinking to age-old problems, like how to use data most effectively in the most efficient possible way. As an Engineer with NetApp, you’ll have the opportunity to work with modern cloud and container orchestration technologies in a production setting. You’ll play an important role in scaling systems sustainably through automation and evolving them by pushing for changes to improve reliability and velocity.
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
San Jose, California, United States; Morrisville, North Carolina, United States Job category: Software Engineering Job ID: 137180-en_USOwn 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 building the next generation of intelligent data infrastructure to help organizations manage, protect, move, and unlock the value of their data across on-premises, hybrid-cloud, and AI environments.
We are seeking Senior, Principal and Distinguished Engineers and Technical Leaders to help architect, design, and build technologies that will evolve ONTAP for the AI era. You will solve complex systems challenges across distributed storage, file systems, data protection, drive/node failure resilience, performance, storage efficiency, AI data infrastructure, virtualization, and hardware.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role for engineers with deep expertise in one or more systems domains and the ability to solve problems across technical boundaries. You will work with engineering teams across ONTAP, WAFL, RAID, Storage, Platform, Performance, and Hardware to develop scalable, resilient, and high-performance solutions.
We are hiring across multiple Teams. These positions may be hired at the MTS5 or MTS6 level based on experience, technical depth, scope, and demonstrated impact.
What You'll Do
- Architect and develop next-generation storage and data infrastructure technologies.
- Influence technical direction and architectural decisions across multiple engineering teams.
- Lead complex systems initiatives from architecture and design through development, optimization, and production Delivery.
- Translate emerging AI, cloud, and enterprise infrastructure requirements into scalable technical solutions.
- Solve complex problems spanning distributed systems, file systems, metadata, data protection, performance, operating systems, networking, and hardware.
- Design highly available and fault-tolerant systems with strong consistency, resiliency, recovery, and performance characteristics.
- Analyze and optimize system performance across CPU, memory, networking, and storage.
- Mentor engineers and raise the technical bar through architecture, design, and code reviews.
- Lead root-cause analysis of complex cross-subsystem issues.
- Develop production-quality systems software using C, C++, or related systems programming languages.
Areas of Technical Expertise
We're looking for deep expertise in one or more, of the following:
- Distributed and scale-out storage systems
- File systems, metadata, consistency, and recovery
- RAID, erasure coding, replication, and data protection
- Storage efficiency, compression, compaction, and deduplication
- AI data infrastructure, training/inference pipelines, RAG, and high-performance I/O
- Storage performance engineering, benchmarking, QoS, and workload characterization
- NVMe, SSD/HDD technologies, storage media, and commodity hardware
- Linux/UNIX/FreeBSD internals and kernel development
- Virtualization, hypervisors, RDMA, and high-performance networking
- Hybrid-cloud and cloud-native data infrastructure
Job Requirements
- 12+ years of software engineering experience designing and developing complex systems software, storage systems, file systems, distributed systems, operating systems, infrastructure software, or related technologies.
- Demonstrated experience architecting and delivering complex, production-quality systems.
- Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across teams and organizational boundaries.
- Deep expertise in at least one area of large-scale storage, distributed systems, or data infrastructure.
- Strong hands-on programming experience in C, C++, or comparable systems programming languages.
- Strong foundation in operating systems, computer architecture, networking, concurrency, storage, and distributed systems.
- Ability to analyze system-level interactions and make technical trade-offs across performance, scalability, reliability, resiliency, efficiency, and cost.
- Strong problem-solving and root-cause analysis skills for problems spanning multiple technical domains.
- Experience providing technical leadership and mentoring engineers.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience architecting large-scale distributed or highly available systems.
- Kernel-level software development and debugging experience.
- Experience with AI/ML infrastructure, GPU data pipelines, or high-performance I/O.
- Experience with performance engineering and benchmarking.
- Knowledge of NVMe, SSDs, HDDs, or commodity storage platforms.
- Experience with hypervisors, virtualization, RDMA, or cloud infrastructure.
- Track record of technical innovation through product architecture, patents, publications, or other significant technical contributions.
Education
- Bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
Compensation:
The target salary range for this position is 227,800 - 338,800 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.
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.