Principal Software Engineer

NetApp•San Jose, WA

39d

About The Position

NetApp’s Cloud AI Team is building a new AI agent product for enterprise customers. The team is applying large language models, agentic frameworks, and multi-cloud engineering to help Fortune 500 companies automate complex workflows across enterprise on-premises and cloud deployments. We are looking for a Principal Engineer to serve as the technical anchor for this product. In this role, you will own the architecture, set the technical direction for the engineering team, and actively design and build alongside them. This is a hands-on role. You will work closely with leadership to translate product vision into deliverable engineering plans. What You Will Build and Own Define the product architecture: service boundaries, data models, API contracts, runtime design, and the integration patterns that connect AI models to enterprise environments. Design and build the core systems: agent orchestration, tool-calling frameworks, multi-cloud execution engines, and the layers that tie them together. Own the developer-facing surface of the product: APIs, SDKs, and tooling that must be fast, reliable, and intuitive for customers building on top of the system. Drive technical execution across the team: set engineering standards, lead design reviews, unblock engineers, and ensure the team delivers high-quality systems on time. Mentor and develop engineers across the team, raising the technical bar and building a culture of excellence.

Requirements

Solid programming experience in server-side languages and frameworks (e.g., Node.js, Python, Java, Golang, or Rust).
Experience with front-end technologies (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript/TypeScript) and frameworks such as React or Angular is a plus.
Proven ability to develop RESTful APIs or microservices, work with web frameworks, and integrate with databases (SQL and/or NoSQL).
Proven ability to design distributed systems, cloud-native products, or developer infrastructure and scale them to production.
Experience building and maintaining modern CI/CD infrastructure that reliably supports large-scale, interconnected software deployment pipelines.
Understanding of security best practices in cloud development, including authentication/authorization (OAuth, SSO), encryption, and compliance standards.
Track record of making high-quality technical decisions under ambiguity: you can evaluate trade-offs across performance, maintainability, cost, and time-to-market and choose a path the team can execute.
Exceptional communication skills. You can explain complex systems to executives, align engineers around a design, and write clear technical documents that drive decisions.
Work as part of a larger team, collaborating closely with team members and leadership to ensure overall team objectives are met as ONE team.
12+ years of industry experience in software development.
7+ years of expert-level hands-on experience in fault-tolerant, highly scalable cloud architectures, including service-oriented architectures, cloud-native services (FAAS, PAAS), and cloud services with at least one hyperscaler (Azure, AWS, GCP).
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing or building AI agent systems, LLM-powered tools, or products that integrate model inference into production workflows (tool calling, RAG, prompt orchestration).
Deep familiarity with agentic design patterns: tool-use protocols, context management, multi-step reasoning, and grounding AI models in real-time enterprise data.
Experience building developer-facing products, APIs, or SDKs used by external customers at scale.
Experience with containerization and deployment tools such as Docker and Kubernetes, and infrastructure-as-code tools (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation).
Background in enterprise infrastructure, cloud data services, or storage systems. You understand how enterprise environments work at scale.
Experience building a new product end-to-end in a fast-paced environment within a larger company.
Prior experience as a technical lead or principal engineer in a high-performance engineering organization.
Master's Degree Preferred.

Responsibilities

Define the product architecture: service boundaries, data models, API contracts, runtime design, and the integration patterns that connect AI models to enterprise environments.
Design and build the core systems: agent orchestration, tool-calling frameworks, multi-cloud execution engines, and the layers that tie them together.
Own the developer-facing surface of the product: APIs, SDKs, and tooling that must be fast, reliable, and intuitive for customers building on top of the system.
Drive technical execution across the team: set engineering standards, lead design reviews, unblock engineers, and ensure the team delivers high-quality systems on time.
Mentor and develop engineers across the team, raising the technical bar and building a culture of excellence.