Senior Software Engineer (Hardware, Networking & Storage)
NetApp · Posted Oct 27
Hybrid cloud data services, enterprise storage, and cloud operations solutions
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About the role
NetApp provides enterprise-grade data infrastructure and storage services across on-prem and major cloud platforms. This role is an org-level technical leadership position for on-prem system architecture spanning software, firmware, hardware, and manufacturing, with a focus on storage, networking, OS internals, and applied AI/GenAI engineering practice. The engineer sets multi-year technical direction, drives architecture decisions, and mentors senior engineers across the organization.
What you will do
- 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
- Owns architectural decisions across storage and hardware interfaces, including performance tuning, failure analysis, and next-generation platform design
- 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
Skills used in this role
What the employer is looking for
- 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
- 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
- IC - Typically requires a minimum of 10 years of related experience.Typically requires a minimum of 8 years of related experience.
Benefits and support
- Compensation and benefits are detailed in the job posting
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
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