Performance Engineer (Cloud Data Plane Engineering)

NetApp, Inc.; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 147,900 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance

Life Insurance

Retirement or Pension Plans

Paid Time Off

Performance-Based Incentives

Employee stock purchase plan

Job summary

NetApp, Inc. is looking for a skilled professional in San Jose, California to design, develop, and optimize cloud software for storage services. Candidates should have a strong background in performance analysis, knowledge of AI/ML techniques, and systems programming, with a minimum of 4 years of experience.

The role involves collaboration with engineering teams to enhance performance and scalability of cloud platforms. Competitive salary range is set at $147,900 – $220,000, based on qualifications and experience, along with a robust benefits package.

Qualifications

• Minimum 4 years of experience in performance engineering.
• Knowledge of modeling techniques and benchmarking.
• Hands-on experience with AI/ML workloads and cloud performance.

Responsibilities

• Design and execute performance benchmarks for cloud services.
• Develop tools for performance analysis and optimization.
• Analyze customer experience signals and usage patterns.

Skills

Performance analysis

AI/ML techniques

Scripting (Python, shell)

Systems programming in C

Education

Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, or PhD Degree in Electrical Engineering or Computer Science

Tools

Jupyter notebooks

Job description

Job Summary

Design, develop, analyze, and optimize cloud software and performance capabilities for cloud storage services and distributed systems. In this role you will collaborate with cross‑functional engineering teams to model, measure, analyze, and improve the performance, scalability, and cost‑efficiency of cloud platforms—ensuring customer and market requirements are met while balancing quality, cost, and time‑to‑market. The ideal candidate is systems‑focused, analytical and creative, and driven to deliver measurable performance improvements at cloud scale.

Responsibilities

• Design and execute performance benchmarks/workloads; measure, analyze, interpret, and socialize results to identify improvement opportunities.
• Apply AI‑assisted performance engineering techniques and develop tools (e.g., performance analysis, automated regression triage, and ML‑based capacity planning) to accelerate bottleneck analysis and guide optimization priorities.
• Evaluate design alternatives and prototype performance enhancements across cloud services and distributed components.
• Collect and analyze customer experience signals and usage patterns; prepare findings and recommendations for engineering and management.

Job Requirements

• A minimum of 4 years of experience is required.
• Knowledge of performance analysis, modeling techniques, benchmarking, and workload characterization.
• Understanding of performance tradeoffs when designing for multi‑tenant, elastic cloud environments (latency, throughput, cost, and reliability).
• Hands‑on experience applying AI/ML techniques to performance engineering; understanding of AI/ML workloads and their impact on cloud storage performance.
• Strong foundations in operating systems, data structures, and standard programming practices; systems programming in C is highly desirable.
• Proficiency with scripting and automation (Python, shell; Perl acceptable) and comfort working with notebooks (e.g., Jupyter).

Education

• A Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, or PhD Degree in Electrical Engineering or Computer Science; or equivalent experience is required.

Compensation:
The target salary range for this position is 147,900 – 220,000 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.

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.