Software Engineer 5
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.
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.
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.
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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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If you are an applicant with a physical or mental disability that requires reasonable accommodation for any part of our application process, please email accessibility@netapp.com. Each request for reasonable accommodation will be considered on a case-by-case basis, consistent with applicable laws and regulations. Please note, this email address is only for accommodation requests; we do not accept unsolicited resumes.
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We’re sorry, but we cannot accept unsolicited resumes that are sent to NetApp employees or contractors. We will not compensate for a referral without a current contract on file with our Talent Acquisition team. If you’re interested in helping us with a particular role, please call your partner in Talent Acquisition to discuss.