Director of Engineering - AI Solutions

NetApp; Morrisville (NC); Hybrid; USD 228,000 - 339,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance

Life Insurance

Retirement/Pension Plans

Paid Time Off

Performance-Based Incentives

Employee Stock Purchase Plan

RSUs

Job summary

NetApp seeks a Director of Engineering – AI Solutions for Developer Productivity to shape the blueprint for AI-enabled developer tools, CI/CD automation, and intelligent code workflows. You will lead ML/AI engineers and partner with Platform and Security teams to deliver scalable, secure productivity solutions that accelerate engineering velocity worldwide.

You will champion governance, security, and adoption, build an internal AI ecosystem, and drive change management through training and best

Qualifications

• 3+ years integrating Generative AI, code-trained LLMs, or agentic frameworks into developer workflows.
• 8+ years of core software engineering experience, with DevEx/IDP or CI/CD background.
• Deep familiarity with IDEs, AI Code Assist, and code scanning tools.
• Understanding of vector search engines and LLM fine-tuning techniques.

Responsibilities

• AI Developer Tooling Strategy: define vision for AI-infused internal tools and CI/CD diagnostics.
• Team Leadership & Platform Delivery: lead ML/AI engineers and coordinate with Platform/DevEx teams.
• Governance, Security & Adoption: enforce guardrails and drive internal AI tool adoption.

Skills

AI & LLM Integration

Software & Platform Foundations

Developer Ecosystems

System Architecture

Leadership

Developer Empathy

Data-Driven

Job description

Own Every Moment at NetApp

At NetApp, your ideas power innovation. We lead in intelligent data infrastructure—delivering unified storage, integrated data services, and solutions that help organizations unlock the full potential of their data, from AI to multicloud.

Ready to innovate and contribute to our path to $10B? Here, you'll collaborate with passionate teams, tackle real-world challenges, and see your impact in how customers transform and grow. If you're ready to bring curiosity, creativity, and drive to every moment, NetApp is where your journey begins. Join teams that innovate to elevate, drive results, and excel together across every function.

Executive Summary

We are looking for an innovative Director of Engineering – AI Solutions for Developer Productivity to transform how our software engineers build, test, and deploy code. In this high-impact role, you will lead the strategy and execution of AI-driven platform tools, intelligent coding assistants, automated code review agents, and automated pipeline workflows. Your goal is to build an internal AI ecosystem that removes developer friction, eliminates repetitive tasks, and measurably boosts engineering velocity across our global technology team.

Key Responsibilities

AI Developer Tooling Strategy

• Internal Platform Roadmap: Define and drive the vision for AI-infused internal developer tools, including LLM code-generation assistants, intelligent CI/CD diagnostic agents, automated code migration tooling, and dynamic documentation systems.
• Productivity Metrics (Core 4, DORA & SPACE): Use established Developer Experience KPIs to introduce AI initiatives/solutions that increase overall engineering output.

Team Leadership & Platform Delivery

• Engineering Management: Lead, recruit, and mentor a team of Machine Learning/AI Engineers (builders, scalers and maintainers) to work closely with the Platform Engineers, and DevEx Engineers to develop AI based productivity solution.
• Ecosystem Integration: Partner with Infrastructure, DevEng, and Security teams to seamlessly integrate AI tools into developer IDEs, version control systems, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Prompt & Context Architecture: Oversee the architecture of code indexing, vector databases, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines that feed repository context securely into internal LLMs.

Governance, Security & Adoption

• Code Privacy & Security: Work closely with Security and Compliance to implement AI based solution that enforce guardrails around IP protection, secret scanning, license compliance, and secure code generation.
• Change Management & Enablement: Champion the adoption of AI tools across engineering teams; establish internal training programs, hackathons, and best practices to help every engineer become an AI-augmented developer.

Qualifications And Skills

Technical Expertise

• AI & LLM Integration: 3+ years integrating Generative AI, code-trained LLMs, or agentic frameworks such as LangChain, AutoGen, LiteLLM, Kong, TrueFoundry or custom RAG pipelines into practical developer workflows.
• Software & Platform Foundations: 8+ years of core software engineering experience, with a background in Developer Experience (DevEx), Internal Developer Platforms (IDP), or CI/CD infrastructure.
• Developer Ecosystems: Deep familiarity with modern IDEs, AI Code Assist, quality and security AI code scanning tools, AI solutions for test harness, code review, etc.
• System Architecture: Solid understanding of vector search engines, embedding models for code representation, and LLM fine-tuning techniques.

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Leadership Track Record: 5+ years managing engineering teams at the Engineering Manager, Senior Manager, or Director level, with a strong emphasis on platform engineering or internal tooling.
• Developer Empathy: Passion for developer productivity, developer satisfaction, and eliminating operational friction.
• Data-Driven Approach: Experience using metrics to measure productivity gains and cost efficiency without compromising code quality or developer well-being.

Compensation

The 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.

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.

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.