{"id":4002236,"url":"https://alion.io/job/netapp-principal-systems-software-engineer","title":"Principal Systems Software Engineer","company":{"id":58700,"name":"NetApp","domain":"netapp.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/netapp","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Eightfold","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":89,"open_postings":28,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.429,"repost_share":0.036,"time_to_fill_p50_days":53,"computed_at":"2026-11-09T06:03:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Jose, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":227800,"max":338800,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":338800},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":12,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"FreeBSD","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Unix","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-09T19:47:32Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-10","last_verified_at":"2026-11-10T04:14:26Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"Job Summary\nNetApp is building the next generation of intelligent data infrastructure to help organizations manage, protect, move, and unlock the value of their data across on-premises, hybrid-cloud, and AI environments.\nWe are seeking Senior, Principal and Distinguished Engineers and Technical Leaders to help architect, design, and build technologies that will evolve ONTAP for the AI era. You will solve complex systems challenges across distributed storage, file systems, data protection, drive/node failure resilience, performance, storage efficiency, AI data infrastructure, virtualization, and hardware.\nThis is a hands-on technical leadership role for engineers with deep expertise in one or more systems domains and the ability to solve problems across technical boundaries. You will work with engineering teams across ONTAP, WAFL, RAID, Storage, Platform, Performance, and Hardware to develop scalable, resilient, and high-performance solutions.\nWe are hiring across multiple Teams. These positions may be hired at the MTS5 or MTS6 level based on experience, technical depth, scope, and demonstrated impact.\nWhat You'll Do\nArchitect and develop next-generation storage and data infrastructure technologies. \nInfluence technical direction and architectural decisions across multiple engineering teams. \nLead complex systems initiatives from architecture and design through development, optimization, and production Delivery. \nTranslate emerging AI, cloud, and enterprise infrastructure requirements into scalable technical solutions. \nSolve complex problems spanning distributed systems, file systems, metadata, data protection, performance, operating systems, networking, and hardware. \nDesign highly available and fault-tolerant systems with strong consistency, resiliency, recovery, and performance characteristics. \nAnalyze and optimize system performance across CPU, memory, networking, and storage. \nMentor engineers and raise the technical bar through architecture, design, and code reviews. \nLead root-cause analysis of complex cross-subsystem issues. \nDevelop production-quality systems software using C, C++, or related systems programming languages. \nAreas of Technical Expertise\nWe're looking for deep expertise in one or more, of the following:\nDistributed and scale-out storage systems \nFile systems, metadata, consistency, and recovery \nRAID, erasure coding, replication, and data protection \nStorage efficiency, compression, compaction, and deduplication \nAI data infrastructure, training/inference pipelines, RAG, and high-performance I/O \nStorage performance engineering, benchmarking, QoS, and workload characterization \nNVMe, SSD/HDD technologies, storage media, and commodity hardware \nLinux/UNIX/FreeBSD internals and kernel development \nVirtualization, hypervisors, RDMA, and high-performance networking \nHybrid-cloud and cloud-native data infrastructure \nJob Requirements\n12+ years of software engineering experience designing and developing complex systems software, storage systems, file systems, distributed systems, operating systems, infrastructure software, or related technologies. \nDemonstrated experience architecting and delivering complex, production-quality systems. \nDemonstrated ability to influence technical direction across teams and organizational boundaries. \nDeep expertise in at least one area of large-scale storage, distributed systems, or data infrastructure. \nStrong hands-on programming experience in C, C++, or comparable systems programming languages. \nStrong foundation in operating systems, computer architecture, networking, concurrency, storage, and distributed systems. \nAbility to analyze system-level interactions and make technical trade-offs across performance, scalability, reliability, resiliency, efficiency, and cost. \nStrong problem-solving and root-cause analysis skills for problems spanning multiple technical domains. \nExperience providing technical leadership and mentoring engineers. \nStrong written and verbal communication skills. \nPreferred Qualifications\nExperience architecting large-scale distributed or highly available systems. \nKernel-level software development and debugging experience. \nExperience with AI/ML infrastructure, GPU data pipelines, or high-performance I/O. \nExperience with performance engineering and benchmarking. \nKnowledge of NVMe, SSDs, HDDs, or commodity storage platforms. \nExperience with hypervisors, virtualization, RDMA, or cloud infrastructure. \nTrack record of technical innovation through product architecture, patents, publications, or other significant technical contributions. \nEducation\nBachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience. \nCompensation:\nThe target salary range for this position is 227,800 - 338,800 USD. The salary offered will be determined by the candidate's location, qualifications, experience, and education and may be outside of this range. Final compensation packages are competitive and in line with industry standards, reflecting a variety of factors, and include a comprehensive benefits package. This may cover Health Insurance, Life Insurance, Retirement or Pension Plans, Paid Time Off, various Leave options, Performance-Based Incentives, employee stock purchase plan, and/or restricted stocks (RSU’s), with all offerings subject to regional variations and governed by local laws, regulations, and company policies. Benefits may vary by country and region, and further details will be provided as part of the recruitment process.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5607,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":12,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Health insurance","Life insurance","Retirement plans"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Cloud Platforms (IaaS & PaaS)","Enterprise Storage Systems","Digital Storage"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-10T04:14:26Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"adverts_offering_sponsorship_24m":0,"sanctioned_now":false,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 164 · green card filings: 52","filings_12m":164,"filings_prev_12m":207,"green_card_filings_12m":52,"median_offered_wage_usd":157315,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-11-09T07:32:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":132}],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":53,"reasons":["conf:1","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-11-10T05:40:35Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":338800,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/netapp-principal-systems-software-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/netapp-principal-systems-software-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-10T05:40:35Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":13177,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-11T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":58700},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=58700"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fnetapp-principal-systems-software-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":2,"usd":0.2},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fnetapp-principal-systems-software-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fnetapp-principal-systems-software-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/netapp-principal-systems-software-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fnetapp-principal-systems-software-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":4002236}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"netapp.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":4002236},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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