Sr Director, Software Engineer AI BU

NetApp; San Jose (CA); Hybrid; USD 260,000 - 380,000; Full time

Job summary

NetApp is seeking a Senior Director of Software Development for its AI business unit. You will lead and scale a high-performing engineering organization to deliver innovative, large-scale services for cloud and On Premises that delight customers and accelerate business growth.

You will set the technical vision, mentor exceptional teams, and drive execution across complex initiatives while upholding high standards of quality, performance, and customer experience.

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.

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.

Skills

Large-scale distributed systems

Leadership & team scaling

Cloud-native architectures

AI/ML systems

Performance & scalability

Executive communication

Job description

Own Every Moment at NetApp At NetApp, your ideas power innovation. We lead in intelligent data infrastructure—delivering unified storage, integrated data services, and solutions that help organizations unlock the full potential of their data, from AI to multicloud.

Own Every Moment at NetApp At NetApp, your ideas power innovation. We lead in intelligent data infrastructure—delivering unified storage, integrated data services, and solutions that help organizations unlock the full potential of their data, from AI to multicloud. Ready to innovate and contribute to our path to $10B? Here, you'll collaborate with passionate teams, tackle real-world challenges, and see your impact in how customers transform and grow. If you're ready to bring curiosity, creativity, and drive to every moment, NetApp is where your journey begins. Join teams that innovate to elevate, drive results, and excel together across every function.

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

As a Senior Director, Software Development, you will:

• 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

At NetApp, we embrace a hybrid working environment designed to strengthen connection, collaboration, and culture for all employees. This means that most roles will have some level of in-office and/or in-person expectations, which will be shared during 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.

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.

NetApp is the trusted partner for organizations transforming data into opportunity. As the only enterprise-grade storage service natively embedded in Google Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft Azure, we empower customers to run everything from traditional workloads to enterprise AI with unmatched performance, resilience, and security.

Our culture

We celebrate mold breakers, bold thinkers, and problem solvers. We reward initiative, impact, and ownership. We provide flexibility so you can balance professional ambition with your personal life. Here, differences are not just welcomed—they drive everything we do.

AI Disclosure

For select roles, some stages of our hiring process may use artificial intelligence tools to help evaluate applications and candidate selection. These tools support—rather than replace—human decision-making.