Staff Software Engineer

Job Summary

NetApp is seeking a passionate and innovative Staff Software Engineer to join our AI Services team. In this role, you will be instrumental in designing and building cutting-edge AI-based experiences that scale across data sets of billions of documents and exabytes of storage. These solutions empower Fortune 500 companies across enterprise on-premises and cloud deployments to leverage the full potential of artificial intelligence and data management. You will collaborate with a talented group of engineers and product managers to deliver scalable, robust, and impactful AI solutions.

Job Requirements

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including designing and shipping large-scale, cloud-native distributed systems in production.
• Strong hands-on expertise across the stack, with experience building modern user experiences using React or Angular and robust backend services using Java, Python, Golang, Node.js, or Rust.
• Proven ability to architect and build APIs, microservices, and event-driven systems with strong understanding of data modeling, SQL/NoSQL databases, caching, and asynchronous processing.
• Experience delivering AI-powered platform capabilities or applications, including working knowledge of LLM-based systems, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), agentic workflows, or intelligent automation patterns.
• Demonstrated technical leadership in driving architecture, design reviews, engineering standards, and execution across multiple teams without direct authority.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD, automated testing, and production operations, with a strong focus on reliability, performance, scalability, security, and observability.
• Strong understanding of secure software development practices, including authentication, authorization, secrets management, and building services that meet enterprise security and compliance requirements.
• Excellent collaboration, communication, and mentoring skills, with a track record of raising the technical bar and enabling teams to deliver high-quality outcomes.
  
  

Preferred Skills And Experience

• Experience building enterprise-scale AI or data platform capabilities, including developer-facing services, reusable frameworks, or shared platform components used across multiple teams.
• Deep experience in designing scalable backend systems, APIs, and microservices with strong engineering judgment around performance, resiliency, maintainability, and operational excellence.
• Hands-on experience with cloud-native architectures on Azure, AWS, or GCP, including Kubernetes, container orchestration, infrastructure automation, and operating services in production at scale.
• Experience improving engineering productivity through CI/CD pipelines, automated quality gates, release workflows, and test strategies that support rapid and reliable delivery.
• Familiarity with enterprise-grade security, governance, and compliance expectations, including identity and access controls, data protection, auditability, and secure-by-default design patterns.
• Preferred experience with Generative AI systems such as LLM application architecture, prompt orchestration, RAG pipelines, vector search, or agentic workflows, along with the ability to guide cross-functional design decisions.
  
  

Education

• 12+ years of industry experience in software development.
• 7+ years of experience in data management systems and storage platforms for managing and storing data across various workloads and environments.
• 7+ years of expert-level hands-on experience in fault-tolerant, highly scalable cloud architectures, including service-oriented architectures, cloud-native (FAAS, PAAS), and cloud storage services with at least one hyperscaler (Azure, AWS, GCP).
  
  

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.