Principal Engineer

Job Summary

NetApp is seeking a Principal Engineer to set the technical direction for the Active IQ platform, defining the architecture and engineering approach for the AI, agentic AI, and intelligent automation capabilities that turn NetApp telemetry into actionable customer intelligence.

This is a senior individual contributor role. The Principal Engineer operates as the most senior technical authority across multiple Active IQ teams, solving ambiguous, high-impact problems that span systems and organizational boundaries, and remains hands-on for the most critical and complex components of the platform.

About Active IQ
NetApp Active IQ is a digital advisor that uses AIOps to simplify and automate the proactive care and optimization of a customer’s infrastructure environment to improve its health and availability. Active IQ provides actionable intelligence for optimal storage health and simplified management.

Responsibilities

• Technical Vision & Architecture: Own the multi-year technical vision and target architecture for Active IQ, and drive alignment on that direction across engineering, product management, and executive leadership.
• Agentic AI & Machine Learning Systems: Architect and deliver agentic AI and machine learning systems that operate reliably at NetApp fleet scale, including the data, evaluation, and safety foundations they depend on.
• Hands-On Technical Leadership: Lead the design and implementation of the most complex and highest-risk components, setting the technical bar through hands-on contribution, design review, and code review.
• Cross-Team Problem Solving: Identify and resolve systemic technical problems that span multiple teams, and establish the engineering standards, patterns, and practices that other teams adopt.
• Technology Evaluation: Evaluate emerging AI and cloud technologies, run the proofs of concept that de-risk them, and make build, buy, or partner recommendations that shape the roadmap.
• Platform Reliability & Security: Partner with SRE and operations to ensure Active IQ services meet availability, performance, and security targets at scale, and drive the automation and observability strategy that sustains them.
• Mentorship: Mentor and grow senior and experienced engineers, raising the technical capability of the broader Active IQ organization without formal management responsibility.
• Collaboration: Work closely with cross-functional teams, including product management, development, design, and operations, to deliver high-quality solutions.
• Technical Representation: Represent NetApp engineering with customers, partners, and industry forums on Active IQ architecture, AI strategy, and technical direction.

Job Requirements

• Experience in design and development of agentic AI applications using modern frameworks such as LangGraph, LangChain, Google ADK, Phoenix, Guardrails, Mem0, and related technologies.
• Strong working knowledge of streaming and event-driven technologies such as Kafka.
• Deep experience with database technologies across relational, document, and vector stores, preferably including MongoDB.
• Extensive knowledge of cloud architecture and containerization, preferably Kubernetes and Docker, with cloud services such as AWS or Azure.
• Extensive knowledge of observability and application performance monitoring platforms such as Dynatrace and Splunk.
• Experience building enterprise software applications with a strong focus on Python development and generative AI technologies.
• Experience in building out the infrastructure layer(Storage, Compute and Databases) to support the Active IQ Ecosystem.
• Demonstrated track record of setting technical direction and delivering complex systems across multiple teams, with influence extending beyond a single organization.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems design, computer architecture, data structures, and large-scale data processing.
• Extensive experience architecting, implementing, and operating highly scalable, production-grade cloud services on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.
• Proven experience designing and shipping AI or machine learning systems in production, including the trade-offs of latency, cost, accuracy, and reliability at scale.
• Ability to drive technical decisions to closure in ambiguous problem spaces where requirements, constraints, and success criteria are not yet defined.
• Strong understanding of both on-premises and cloud infrastructure, and of the reliability and security practices required to operate customer-facing services.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor senior engineers and elevate engineering practice across teams.
• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to make complex technical trade-offs clear to both engineering teams and executive stakeholders.
• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to build consensus across organizations.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

Education

Education: B.S. in Computer Science or a related field is required; an M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science or a related field is preferred.

Experience: 15+ years of experience in the high-tech industry is required, including demonstrated technical leadership at the principal or equivalent level.