Principal Software Engineer (AI)

Job Summary

NetApp is building intelligent data infrastructure to help customers make their data AI-ready. The AI Business Unit is creating AI Data Services, connecting enterprise data with analytics and AI agents. As a Principal Engineer, you’ll help architect and shape this new platform from the ground up. You’ll lead complex technical initiatives across storage, data, and AI while remaining a hands-on individual contributor. It’s a unique opportunity to solve challenging data infrastructure problems and influence the future of AI at NetApp.

Job Requirements

Key Responsibilities

Serve as the architectural north star for the system, resolving the hardest design, performance, and scaling problems as the team turns customer data into something analytically useful for people and AI agents.

Design and tech-lead complex, cross-team initiatives, setting technical direction for products at the intersection of storage, data, and AI.

Drive high-leverage technical decisions on data architecture, including technology choices, data modeling, and system scalability and reliability, across both on-premises and cloud deployments.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, including technical lead or primary design owner experience on distributed systems, data platforms.
• Deep hands-on experience in Python, Java, or a comparable modern language, building production-grade data pipelines and services.
• Hands-on experience with agentic AI engineering, or AI/agent-facing infrastructure such as retrieval, search, or tool-access protocols for AI applications.
• Strong understanding of modern data platform architectures, including data lakes, table formats, and Iceberg-based (or comparable) catalog systems.
• Exposure to large-scale distributed systems, including streaming or event-driven architectures.
• Hands-on experience with cloud-native architectures, and familiarity with on-premises infrastructure and storage systems.
• Experience with distributed query engines and SQL-based data access patterns.
• Demonstrated ability to drive technical decisions and influence direction across multiple engineering teams without relying on formal management authority.

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field required. Equivalent practical experience will be considered in lieu of formal education.

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.