Open Source Engineering Manager — Lead Global Contributors

NetApp; Morrisville (NC); Hybrid; USD 196,000 - 293,000; Full time

Job summary

NetApp is seeking an Open Source Engineering Manager to lead the Open Source Contributions team and keep NetApp Instaclustr influential across Cassandra, OpenSearch, Kafka, and Cadence.

You'll shape contribution strategies that deliver customer value, collaborate with Product, Engineering, Developer Relations, Support, and Marketing, and mentor a globally distributed team to improve reliability, performance, and user experience of the Instaclustr platform.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of relevant industry experience.
• 3+ years of people management or leadership experience.
• Strong understanding of open source development models, communities, and licensing.
• Experience working with distributed engineering teams.
• Ability to review code and understand modern software development workflows.
• Familiarity with development tools such as Git, CI/CD pipelines, and IDEs.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience collaborating across Product Management, Engineering, Support, and Developer Relations teams.
• Ability to influence without authority and build relationships across technical communities.
• Knowledge of AI tools and practical AI use cases.
• Working knowledge of cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Strong organizational, planning, and prioritization skills.
• Ability to work independently in a globally distributed environment.
• Comfortable with asynchronous communication and remote collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and grow a distributed team of open source engineers.
• Define and execute the open source engagement strategy and team OKRs.
• Partner with Product Management to bring community feedback into product planning.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Support to resolve complex issues involving upstream projects.
• Represent NetApp within strategic open source communities, foundations, and working groups.
• Build relationships with maintainers and influence project direction and governance.
• Track team objectives, delivery plans, risks, budgets, and resource allocation.
• Drive hiring, onboarding, performance management, coaching, and career development.
• Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, inclusion, and continuous improvement.
• Promote best practices for community participation and open source contributions.
• Encourage adoption of AI tools and practices that improve team productivity.
• Provide regular executive updates and stakeholder communications.
• Participate in community discussions, technical forums, and industry events.

Skills

Open source development

Distributed teams

Code review

Git

CI/CD

IDEs

Communication

Cross-team collaboration

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical discipline. Equivalent practical experience will also be considered.

Tools

Git

CI/CD pipelines

IDEs

Job description

NetApp is seeking an Open Source Engineering Manager to lead the Open Source Contributions team and keep NetApp Instaclustr influential across Cassandra, OpenSearch, Kafka, and Cadence.

You'll shape contribution strategies that deliver customer value, collaborate with Product, Engineering, Developer Relations, Support, and Marketing, and mentor a globally distributed team to improve reliability, performance, and user experience of the Instaclustr platform.