Principal AI Systems Architect

NetApp, Inc.; San Jose, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 196,000 - 293,000; Full time

Job summary

NetApp is seeking a Principal Engineer in its AI Business Unit to drive technical direction for cross-team AI initiatives. You will architect end-to-end systems, set design standards across multiple teams, and stay hands-on to push high-stakes designs through execution. You will mentor engineers and shape roadmaps with leadership.

The role emphasizes hands-on coding, cross-team influence, and solving complex scalability and reliability challenges in data/storage and AI workloads.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of hands-on software engineering experience with large-scale distributed systems.
• Technical lead or architect on multi-team initiatives.
• Experience with cloud-native architectures on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Hands-on experience with Distributed Storage Systems.
• Ability to build technical consensus across teams without formal authority.
• Strong system design and ownership of high-availability, low-latency services.
• Experience with data processing, analytics, and AI/ML systems.
• Prior experience building CI/CD infrastructure for large-scale deployments.

Responsibilities

• Serve as technical architect and/or tech lead on major AI BU initiatives, owning end-to-end system design.
• Set technical direction and design standards across engineering teams.
• Drive cross-cutting technical problems to well-reasoned solutions; author design docs/RFCs.
• Maintain hands-on contribution: write production code and review critical designs.
• Collaborate with leadership to translate business priorities into technical roadmaps.
• Mentor engineers and raise technical bar across teams without formal management authority.
• Identify architectural risks and drive resolutions to prevent fires.
• Represent AI BU engineering in cross-functional and executive reviews.
• Champion best practices in design, testing, observability, and operations.

Skills

Cloud-native architectures

Distributed Storage Systems

Technical leadership

System design

AI/ML systems

Design docs/RFCs

Mentoring engineers

Hands-on coding

Cross-team influence

CI/CD infrastructure

Tools

AWS/Azure/Google Cloud

Job description

NetApp is seeking a Principal Engineer in its AI Business Unit to drive technical direction for cross-team AI initiatives. You will architect end-to-end systems, set design standards across multiple teams, and stay hands-on to push high-stakes designs through execution. You will mentor engineers and shape roadmaps with leadership.

The role emphasizes hands-on coding, cross-team influence, and solving complex scalability and reliability challenges in data/storage and AI workloads.