Principal Systems Software Engineer

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.

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We are all about helping customers turn challenges into business opportunity. It starts with bringing new thinking to age-old problems, like how to use data most effectively to run better - but also to innovate. We tailor our approach to the customer's unique needs with a combination of fresh thinking and proven approaches.

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.