Sr Director, Software Engineer AI BU

NetApp; California; On-site; USD 250,000 - 360,000; Full time

Job summary

NetApp is seeking a Senior Director of Software Development for the AI business unit to lead a high-performing engineering organization delivering cloud and on-premises services that delight customers and accelerate growth.

You will set the technical vision, mentor leaders, and drive end-to-end delivery with a focus on reliability, scalability, and performance across cloud-native platforms. Prior storage systems experience is preferred but not mandatory.

Qualifications

• 15 years of software development experience, including large-scale distributed systems.
• ],
• job_responsibilities_description:[
• ],
• CoT_job_summary_short
• job_summary_short
• contract_type
• location_type
• remote_scope
• perks
• stated_min
• stated_max
• stated_absolute
• salary_estimation_cot
• estimated_low
• estimated_medium
• estimated_high
• currency
• frequency
• bonus
• tax
• application_email
• job_end_date
• contact_person
• hiring_department_name

Responsibilities

• Set strategic direction for software development across multiple teams.
• Lead and scale engineering teams aligned to business goals.
• Drive end-to-end SDLC in Agile from feature definition to production support.
• Establish and optimize development processes, operational metrics, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Mentor and develop senior engineering leaders, fostering innovation and accountability.
• Collaborate with executive leadership to define priorities and deliver customer-centric solutions.
• Champion reliability, scalability, and performance of cloud-native services.
• Recruit and retain top talent, building diverse, high-performing teams.
• Advocate for best practices in engineering and operations across the organization.

Skills

Leadership

Cloud-native architectures

Distributed systems

CI/CD infrastructure

AI/ML systems

Data modeling

Performance optimization

Tools

AWS

Azure

Google Cloud

Job description

Job Summary

As the Senior Director of Software Development for NetApp AI business unit, you will lead and scale a high-performing engineering organization to deliver innovative, large-scale services for both cloud and On Premises that delight customers and accelerate business growth. In this pivotal leadership role, you will set the technical vision, build and mentor exceptional teams, and drive execution across complex, large-scale initiatives.

You will demonstrate ownership and insist on the highest standards of quality, maintainability, performance, availability, and customer experience. You will simplify complexity, work backward from customer needs, and deliver measurable results. This role requires strong collaboration with senior leaders across Cloud Storage and other business units. Prior experience in storage systems is preferred but not mandatory.

Key Responsibilities

• Set strategic direction for software development and architecture across multiple teams and product lines.
• Lead and scale engineering teams, ensuring alignment with business objectives and technical excellence.
• Drive end-to-end software development lifecycle in an Agile environment, from feature definition to production
• support.
• Establish and optimize development processes, operational metrics, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Mentor and develop senior engineering leaders, fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, and inclusion.
• Collaborate with executive leadership and cross-functional teams to define priorities and deliver customer-
• centric solutions.
• Champion operational excellence, including reliability, scalability, and performance of cloud-native services.
• Recruit and retain top talent, building diverse, high-performing teams.
• Advocate for best practices in engineering and operations across the organization.

Key Qualifications

• 15 years of industry experience in software development, including large-scale distributed systems.
• 10 years of leadership experience, managing multiple engineering teams and senior technical leaders.
• Proven track record of delivering highly scalable, available, and low-latency cloud services.
• Hands-on experience with cloud-native architectures on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Well versed in using agentic engineering using local and/or frontier models
• Hands-on experience using Distributed Storage Systems.
• Strong business acumen and ability to influence strategy & direction at the executive level.
• Exceptional communication skills, capable of presenting complex technical concepts to diverse audiences.
• Experience defining and implementing best practices for the full software development lifecycle.
• Expertise in performance, scalability, and enterprise system architecture.
• Experience with data processing, analytics, and AI/ML systems.
• Domain expertise on knowledge graphs, semantics and data modeling.
• Prior experience building CI/CD infrastructure for large-scale deployments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with Distributed Database Systems.
• Hands-on experience with training and deploying AI models

135943

We are all about helping customers turn challenges into business opportunity. It starts with bringing new thinking to age-old problems, like how to use data most effectively to run better - but also to innovate. We tailor our approach to the customer's unique needs with a combination of fresh thinking and proven approaches.

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.

Our culture

We celebrate mold breakers, bold thinkers, and problem solvers. We reward initiative, impact, and ownership. We provide flexibili