VP of Engineering, Storage Protocols

NetApp; San Jose (CA); Hybrid; USD 323,000 - 418,000; Full time

Job summary

NetApp seeks a visionary VP of Engineering for Distributed Storage Services & Protocols. You will own the technical strategy for File, Block, and Object protocols across ONTAP and StorageGRID, guiding teams to meet AI-scale demands while preserving enterprise workloads.

This executive role reports to the SVP of Platform Engineering and leads about 350 engineers, driving architectural coherence, performance, and reliable operation in a hybrid, remote-friendly setup based near San Jose, CA.

Qualifications

• 15+ years in engineering leadership for storage, infrastructure or platform software.
• Deep fluency in enterprise distributed systems and storage protocols.
• Proven ability to resolve cross-organizational architectural questions and lead large escalations.

Responsibilities

• Own technical strategy for File, Block, and Object protocols across ONTAP and StorageGRID.
• Lead a ~350-strong engineering organization with focus on health and retention.
• Shape architectural roadmap for object storage and multiprotocol data access.
• Partner with Product Management and principal architects to keep investments coherent.
• Represent technical tradeoffs to executives and ensure reliability and scale.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Executive communication

Distributed systems

Storage protocols

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science/EE

Job description

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

VP of Engineering, Distributed Storage Services & Protocols

The Opportunity

Storage is having its moment again — AI training and inference workloads are forcing a rethink of how data is stored, moved, and served at scale, and NetApp sits at the center of that shift. As VP of Engineering for Distributed Storage Services & Protocols, you'll own the technical strategy and execution for File (NAS), Block (SAN), and Object (S3) across ONTAP and StorageGRID. Your central mandate is guiding these teams to meet the performance, quality, and scale demands that AI workloads are placing on the protocol stack — from high-concurrency training-data access to inference-time latency and reliability at scale — while keeping the enterprise workloads that are our foundation running without compromise.

This is a build-and-lead role for someone who wants deep technical ownership at VP scope: real architectural influence — shaping direction in close partnership with principal architects — a seat in executive strategy discussions, and a mandate to build and sustain a high-performing engineering organization that can meet the next generation of workloads.

Role

Reports to: SVP of Platform Engineering

Location: Remote-friendly — we're flexible on where you're based. Our senior leadership team is primarily based in San Jose, CA, and this role should expect to spend meaningful time there.

Scope: Leads engineering across File, Block, Object, and StorageGRID protocol teams — an organization of roughly 350 engineers.

Job Requirements

What You Will Own

• Technical strategy and execution across ONTAP's File (NFS, SMB, multiprotocol), Block (iSCSI, FC, NVMe/TCP, NVMe/FC), and Object (S3) protocol teams, plus the StorageGRID engineering organization.
• Building, developing, and retaining a high-performing, multi-layered engineering leadership team across File, Block, Object, and StorageGRID — with real focus on sustainable team health and long-term retention, not just delivery velocity.
• The architectural roadmap for object storage across the portfolio — including how performance-oriented ONTAP S3 and capacity/throughput-oriented StorageGRID object storage differentiate and integrate — in close partnership with Product Management and principal architects, so engineering investment stays coherent rather than duplicative.
• The technical roadmap for multiprotocol data access that balances enterprise workload modernization with emerging AI/ML training, inference, and data-lakehouse use cases.
• Reliability, performance, and scale for the protocol stack, including executive-level ownership of major customer escalations involving protocol behavior at scale.
• Standards participation and protocol compliance (NFS, SMB, iSCSI, FC, NVMe, S3, Tables) to keep NetApp interoperable across enterprise and hyperscaler ecosystems.
• Organizational design for where protocol and control-plane capabilities sit within Platform Engineering — grounded in evidence like backlog composition and ownership boundaries.
• Close partnership with peer engineering leaders across ONTAP Core, Manageability, and Data Replication (MetroCluster, SnapMirror) to keep the broader storage platform architecturally coherent.
• A voice in executive technical strategy, including NetApp's technical narrative on object and metadata architecture for neocloud customers.

What We're Looking For

• 15+ years of engineering leadership in storage, infrastructure, or platform software, including 8+ years leading multiple layers of engineering management, with a track record of building distributed, horizontally scalable, and fault-tolerant systems.
• Deep technical fluency in enterprise distributed systems — e.g., storage protocols (NAS, block, or object/S3), large-scale networking, or comparable infrastructure domains — with the ability to go deep on at least one and reason credibly across the others.
• A track record of resolving ambiguous, cross-organizational architectural and org-design questions, and of leading large-scale customer escalations to resolution across engineering, support, and field teams.
• Excellent executive communication — you can represent complex technical tradeoffs clearly to senior leadership and partner effectively with Product Management.

Strongly Preferred

• Experience with hyperscaler/public-cloud architecture, with a proven track record of deploying large-scale distributed systems.
• Experience building storage or data infrastructure for AI/ML workloads — training, inference, or data pipelines.
• Experience restructuring or right-sizing engineering teams based on evidence rather than assumption.
• A leadership style grounded in developing others, not positional authority.

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.

Compensation

The target salary range for this position is 323,000 - 418,000 USD. 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, 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.

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.

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.