Principal Engineer

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

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer who combines deep software engineering expertise with the ability to influence technology strategy across the organization. This role balances hands-on technical contribution with architectural leadership, enabling you to shape the future of our cloud and AI-powered platforms while collaborating with engineering, product, and business leaders.

You will help define technical direction, drive innovation, and accelerate the adoption of modern cloud and AI technologies while remaining actively involved in the design and delivery of production-grade software solutions.

What You'll Do

Software Engineering (50%)

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable, secure, and reliable production-grade software solutions.

• Build and operate cloud-native services and SaaS platforms that serve customers at scale.

• Apply AI technologies, large language models (LLMs), intelligent automation, and emerging technologies to solve business and engineering challenges.

• Participate in architecture reviews, design discussions, code reviews, and quality initiatives.

Technical Leadership & Advocacy (50%)

• Define and communicate technical vision, architecture strategy, and engineering best practices.

• Create reference architectures, technical designs, and executive-ready presentations.

• Lead technical discussions across engineering, product, and leadership teams.

• Drive innovation by evaluating emerging technologies and identifying opportunities for adoption.

• Mentor engineers, facilitate knowledge sharing, and help raise the technical bar across the organization.

• Represent engineering through architecture reviews, demos, technical forums, and strategic initiatives.

Job Requirements

• What You'll Bring

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including designing and delivering large-scale distributed systems.

• 7+ years of experience building, deploying, and operating SaaS applications in public cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP).

• Strong expertise in cloud-native architectures, microservices, APIs, distributed systems, and modern software development practices.

• Experience developing scalable applications using languages such as Java, Go, Python, C#, JavaScript, or TypeScript. Node.js experience is a plus.

• Familiarity with AI technologies, generative AI, LLMs, agentic frameworks, intelligent automation, and AI-powered application development.

• Proven ability to influence technical decisions, drive architectural alignment, and collaborate effectively across teams and organizational boundaries.

• Excellent communication and presentation skills with the ability to engage both technical and executive audiences.

• Passion for mentoring others, continuous learning, innovation, and delivering customer-focused outcomes.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Advanced degree (Master's or PhD) in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, or a related field is a plus but not required.

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.