Software Engineer 4
Job Summary
As a Senior Software Engineer, you will serve as a technical leader and org-level authority for on-prem system architecture, setting the multi-year technical vision and strategy across software, firmware, hardware, and manufacturing not just for a single team, but for how the broader engineering organization builds, validates, and scales low-level systems. You will be recognized as a driving force in applying AI/GenAI to engineering practice itself shaping how the org uses AI in design, validation, and automation while also owning the deepest technical bets on storage, networking, and OS architecture. This role carries organizational influence: your technical judgment sets direction that other senior engineers and teams align to.
Job Requirements
- Defines and owns the multi-year technical roadmap for on-prem platform architecture, balancing performance, reliability, cost, and manufacturability
- Makes and defends high-stakes architectural trade-offs with org-wide impact, and is accountable for their long-term consequences
- Identifies emerging technologies (hardware, protocols, AI-driven tooling) worth betting on, and builds the case to adopt them org-wide
- Acts as a recognized leader in applying AI/GenAI across engineering not only using GenAI tools, but setting the strategy, standards, and best practices for how the org adopts them
- Drives architecture decisions for LLM/GenAI-powered systems: RAG pipelines, agentic automation, model evaluation frameworks, and prompt/response reliability at scale
- Evangelizes and mentors other engineers and leads on applied AI running reviews, setting guardrails (accuracy, cost, data privacy), and identifying where AI should and shouldn't be used
- Represents the org's AI engineering direction to senior leadership and, where relevant, external technical communities
- Authoritative, protocol-level expertise across networking, capable of driving architecture decisions and resolving the org's hardest network-layer issues
- TCP/IP network stack
- Computer networks
- NFS, SMB, iSCSI, FC
- Deep, authoritative command of OS internals sets direction on kernel/OS architecture decisions and is the escalation point for the hardest root-cause investigations
- Linux, Unix OS internals (Kernel & Networking)
- FreeBSD and its architecture
- OS booting process (Linux/Unix)
- BIOS/UEFI, GRUB bootloaders
- Owns architectural decisions across storage and hardware interfaces, including performance tuning, failure analysis, and next-generation platform design
- NAS, SAN
- NVMe technologies, NVMeOF (NVMe over Fabrics) architecture and design trade-offs
- PCIe, Ethernet interfaces
- RAID, SSDs
- IOM (I/O Module) design, shelf/enclosure architecture, and hardware interface integration
- Sets the automation strategy and standards for the broader team determining what should be automated, how, and to what reliability bar
- Maintains expert, hands-on fluency in Python, C, and C++, using it to prototype and validate architectural decisions directly, not only to review them
- Mentors senior and staff-level engineers, shaping how they grow technically and how they approach ambiguous problems
- Runs and sets the bar for architecture reviews across multiple teams, not just design/code review within one
- Aligns software, firmware, hardware, and manufacturing organizations around shared technical direction, resolving cross-org technical disagreements
- Represents the company's technical position in customer escalations, partner discussions, or industry forums as needed
- Owns the technical narrative for the platform architecture docs, technical roadmaps, and strategic planning inputs to leadership
Education
IC - Typically requires a minimum of 10 years of related experience.Typically requires a minimum of 8 years of related experience.
All internal movements within the Product Group via requisition will be lateral, offering valuable growth opportunities to extend your skills in a new area. Opportunities for a promotion will be reviewed in the normal course of business, aligned with our promotion 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.
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Why NetApp?
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.
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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.
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Learn moreNetApp 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. 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.
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