Senior AI Platform Architect

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

Job summary

NetApp is seeking a Principal Engineer in its AI BU to lead cross‑team architecture and drive technical direction across storage, data, and AI initiatives. You are the engineer other teams turn to for the hardest design and architecture problems, while remaining hands‑on.

You will mentor engineers, author design docs, drive architectural coherence, and partner with leadership to translate business priorities into technical roadmaps.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of hands-on software engineering experience.
• Technical lead or architect on multi-team initiatives.
• Experience with cloud-native architectures on AWS/Azure/Google Cloud.
• Hands-on with distributed storage systems.
• Ability to build consensus and influence direction.
• Strong system design ownership for highly available, low-latency services.
• Excellent written and verbal communication for design docs and RFCs.
• Experience with data processing, analytics, and AI/ML systems.
• Mentoring engineers and raising technical quality across teams.
• CI/CD infrastructure experience for large-scale deployments.

Responsibilities

• Serve as technical architect or tech lead across major AI BU initiatives, owning end-to-end design.
• Set technical direction and design standards across engineering teams.
• Drive cross-cutting technical problems to solutions, authoring RFCs.
• Stay hands-on: write production code and review high-stakes designs.
• Translate business priorities into technical roadmaps and architecture decisions.
• Mentor engineers and raise technical bar without formal management authority.
• Identify risks and drive resolution before it becomes a fire.
• Represent AI BU engineering in cross-functional reviews with executives.
• Champion best practices in system design, testing, observability, and ops.

Skills

12+ years experience

Technical lead or architect

Cloud-native architectures

Distributed Storage Systems

Influence without formal authority

System design ownership

CI/CD for large-scale deployments

AI/ML data processing

Leadership without management

Communication to engineers/executives

Tools

AWS

Azure

Google Cloud

Job description

NetApp is seeking a Principal Engineer in its AI BU to lead cross‑team architecture and drive technical direction across storage, data, and AI initiatives. You are the engineer other teams turn to for the hardest design and architecture problems, while remaining hands‑on.

You will mentor engineers, author design docs, drive architectural coherence, and partner with leadership to translate business priorities into technical roadmaps.