Principal Software Engineer
NetApp · Posted Oct 7
Hybrid cloud data services, enterprise storage, and cloud operations solutions
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About the role
NetApp is a data infrastructure company and the only enterprise-grade storage service natively embedded in Google Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft Azure, helping customers run workloads from traditional applications to enterprise AI. The team owns software delivery across cloud-service and storage-platform environments. This role, Principal Software Release Engineer, defines and continuously improves the end-to-end release lifecycle, coordinating release planning, build generation, validation, approvals, deployment, and post-release follow-through while replacing manual handoffs with automation and engineering controls.
What you will do
- Own the end-to-end software release lifecycle, from release intake and planning through build, validation, approval, deployment, verification, and closure.
- Plan and coordinate concurrent releases across development, test, staging, and production environments, maintaining clear schedules, dependencies, milestones, owners, and decision points.
- Design, maintain, and improve CI/CD and release automation that reduces manual steps, accelerates delivery, and provides repeatable, auditable outcomes.
- Partner with development and quality teams to confirm required test coverage, regression results, performance validation, and environment readiness; escalate gaps that could compromise release quality.
- Lead response to build or deployment failures by rapidly coordinating triage, clarifying ownership, documenting the failure path, and ensuring the correct new release, hotfix, retry, rollback, or recovery workflow is initiated.
- Conduct post-release reviews and convert lessons learned into improved tooling, templates, quality gates, automation, and release policy.
- Mentor engineers and release participants on release processes, tools, quality expectations, change controls, and failure-recovery practices.
Skills used in this role
What the employer is looking for
- 12+ years of software engineering, DevOps, build and release engineering, site reliability engineering, or production engineering experience, including technical leadership for complex, business-critical software releases.
- Demonstrated experience managing the full release lifecycle for production software or cloud services across multiple environments and teams.
- Hands-on experience with CI/CD systems, build automation, source control, branching and versioning strategies, artifact management, and deployment pipelines.
- Proficiency in one or more scripting or programming languages such as Python, PowerShell, Bash, Go, or similar languages used for release automation.
- Experience with Azure DevOps, Git, Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or comparable build, release, and work-tracking platforms.
- Ability to analyze release risks using defect data, test evidence, dependencies, configuration changes, and operational impact rather than relying only on schedule readiness.
- Strong troubleshooting skills with the ability to isolate build, pipeline, configuration, environment, and deployment issues under time pressure.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including concise executive status, detailed technical handoffs, and decision-focused escalation.
- High attention to detail, disciplined follow-through, and the ability to manage multiple releases and priorities without losing traceability or control.
- Education IC - Typically requires a minimum of 15 years of related experience. Mgr & Exec - Typically requires a minimum of 10 years of related experience.
Benefits and support
- Flexibility to balance professional ambition with personal life
- Hybrid working environment
About NetApp
NetApp, Inc. is an American data infrastructure and data management company that provides unified data storage, integrated data services, and hybrid multi-cloud operations solutions to enterprise customers. Founded in 1992, the company empowers global enterprises to manage applications and data seamlessly across on-premises environments and major public clouds. NetApp specializes in intelligent data infrastructure, cyber resilience, and AI-driven data optimization.
- Industry
- Cloud Computing
- Company size
- 11700 employees
- Founded
- 1992
- Location
- San Jose, California, USA
- Funding stage
- Public Company
Funding
Public Company
Leadership
Chief Executive Officer
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer
President
Chief Technology Officer
Recent coverage
Business Wire
NetApp and Oracle to Launch Fully Managed Cloud Storage Service for Demanding AI and Enterprise Workloads2026-09-29
Reuters
NetApp at INSIGHT 2026: bets on ai-era data infrastructure2026-09-29
NetApp Newsroom
NetApp Recognizes Winners of 2026 North America Partner Awards2026-10-02
Database Trends and Applications
NetApp and Oracle Partner to Provide Fully Managed Cloud Storage Service2026-10-07