Sr. Open Source Software Engineer - Apache Cassandra

NetApp; Morrisville (NC); Hybrid; USD 220,000 - 265,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance

Life Insurance

Paid Time Off (PTO)

Employee stock purchase plan

Job summary

NetApp in Morrisville, NC, is looking for a seasoned Apache Cassandra committer to enhance its managed services. You will lead upstream initiatives and engage with a distributed global team, ensuring both community and customer impacts are met efficiently.

This role demands extensive software engineering experience, particularly with distributed systems and Java. NetApp offers a competitive compensation of $220,000-$265,000, reflecting qualifications and skills. Join us to innovate and thrive in a collaborative environment.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 12 years of applicable professional software engineering experience required.
• Current Apache Cassandra committer status with community standing.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical work through open source governance.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end upstream initiatives in Apache Cassandra.
• Provide binding committer reviews on upstream patches.
• Translate enterprise customer needs into upstream proposals.

Skills

Expert Java engineering capability

Deep mastery of Apache Cassandra internals

Strong written communication

Proven senior-level technical judgment

Education

Bachelor's degree in engineering or technical field

Job description

Overview

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.

Job Summary

Are you an Apache Cassandra committer who wants to operate at the highest level of technical and community influence? This role connects deep upstream work - binding committer authority, CEP-level design, release stewardship - directly to production-scale outcomes in one of the largest enterprise Cassandra deployments in the world.

NetApp Instaclustr runs one of the industry\'s largest Cassandra managed services, spanning a broad range of enterprise customers across financial services, retail, and technology sectors. Our Cassandra engineering team leads active work on Cassandra 6.0, owns releases across core and ecosystem subprojects, and drives upstream contributions that directly address production-scale operator needs.

The successful applicant will become our second Apache Cassandra core committer, joining a team that already includes an established core committer as well as a committer on the Cassandra Drivers project.

You will work at both levels - upstream influence and customer impact - with meaningful autonomy, strong peer collaboration, and direct access to the product and field relationships that turn technical work into commercial outcomes. This is a globally distributed team with up to 10% travel. The role is based in one of our office locations - US. Note that we have global opportunities as well in Cork, Ireland & Netherlands (Schiphol). (San Jose, Raleigh, Boston, or Seattle) requires 3 days per week in office.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end upstream initiatives in Apache Cassandra, from CEP authoring and design consensus through implementation, review, and release, in domains such as storage/compaction, indexing and SAI/vector, distributed repair, observability, and Cassandra releases.
• Provide binding committer reviews on upstream patches and community contributions, applying the technical rigor and authority that moves high-quality work through the Apache Cassandra review process.
• Co-own Apache Cassandra core release management as part of the rotating committer pool and, where capacity allows, contribute to NetApp-led ecosystem releases (Cassandra Sidecar, Analytics, GoCQL).
• Translate enterprise customer needs into credible upstream proposals, CEP-level designs, and sustained technical engagement that only a committer can supply; advise product and field teams on complex upstream trade-offs.
• Shape community direction through evidence-based participation on the dev@ mailing list, Apache Jira, GitHub, and community forums; influence project decisions on architecture, release policy, contribution standards, and long-term roadmap.
• Mentor engineers toward committer standing and raise overall contribution quality through rigorous review practices, test discipline, and clear engineering guidance.
• Improve upstream infrastructure - CI reliability, test coverage, contributor tooling, and release automation - to reduce project-wide maintenance burden and strengthen NetApp's reputation as a steward of the project.

Qualifications

• A minimum of 12 years of applicable professional software engineering experience is required.
• Current Apache Cassandra committer status with a sustained and publicly verifiable upstream track record across patches, reviews, and community standing in Cassandra core or a closely related subproject.
• Expert Java engineering capability in performance-sensitive, concurrent, and production-grade distributed systems - comfortable writing, reviewing, and reasoning about complex Cassandra internals at depth.
• Deep mastery of Apache Cassandra internals in at least one major domain: storage engine and compaction, indexing and SAI/vector, distributed consensus and repair (including Accord and CEP-37), observability and virtual tables, or release management and CI.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical work through the Apache open source governance model: CEP authoring or co-sponsorship, design consensus, mailing-list engagement, and Jira-driven delivery from proposal through merge.
• Strong written communication for asynchronous, global, public technical collaboration - mailing lists, design documents, code reviews, and Jira threads.
• Proven senior-level technical judgment: resolves most blockers independently, determines approach on novel or ambiguous assignments, surfaces systemic risks proactively, and produces work that is consistent with project and team objectives.

Preferred Qualifications

• PMC membership in Apache Cassandra or a related Apache subproject.
• Track record of work in Cassandra 6.0 feature areas (Accord, Transactional Cluster Metadata, CEP-37 automated repair, CEP-38 CQL Management API, ZSTD dictionary compression, SAI/vector write performance).
• Experience connecting upstream technical leadership to enterprise customer and operator outcomes - translating production pain points into accepted community improvements.
• History of mentoring contributors toward reviewer or committer standing in an open governance project.
• Familiarity with Cassandra ecosystem subprojects: Sidecar, Analytics (Spark bulk), GoCQL, or Apache Cassandra drivers.

Education

Bachelor\'s degree in engineering or technical related field of study or additional equivalent experience.

Team Information

Leadership and team culture

The hiring manager for this role is an Engineering Manager for the Open Source Engineering team. You will join a globally distributed group that values committer-grade technical judgment, clear ownership, transparent community engagement, and practical impact on real customer outcomes. The team culture is high-trust and high-accountability. We support engineers who can go deep technically, mentor others generously, collaborate across product and field functions, and improve both code and the contributor ecosystem around it. You will have significant autonomy paired with close collaboration and genuine visibility into the strategic bets your work enables.

Compensation & Benefits

The target salary range for this position is $220,000-265,000. 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 (PTO), 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.

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.

If you\'re ready to innovate, rise to the challenge, and own every moment - make your next move your best one. Apply now.

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.