Principal Software Engineer

Own Every Moment at Net App

At Net App, 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, Net App is where your journey begins. Join teams that innovate to elevate, drive results, and excel together across every function.

Join the Net App Trident team and help define the Kubernetes story for one of the industry’s most established storage platforms. You will be part of the Trident program—the team behind the first open-source, out-of-tree dynamic storage provisioner for Kubernetes—and will shape the roadmap for persistent storage on Kubernetes. In this role, you will own key architectural decisions, drive adoption of Net App’s cloud-native storage solutions, and represent the team in open-source and customer-facing forums.

You will work closely with upstream communities, product management, and customers to deliver practical, scalable solutions for persistent storage in containerized environments. Our team builds innovative solutions that help customers manage persistent storage for Kubernetes and other container platforms. We contribute code and technical leadership upstream, and we work across storage, distributed systems, and cloud-native ecosystems to solve real customer problems.

We are looking for someone who is results-driven, collaborative, curious, and creative—someone who takes ownership, delivers high-quality work independently, and brings broad experience across embedded systems, operating systems, storage, and distributed systems.

As a Principal Engineer, you will:

• Lead architectural design and guide the team through critical technical decisions
• Provide technical leadership across associated teams and programs
• Partner with product management on roadmap planning and prioritization
• Engage directly with customers on escalations, requirements, and solution validation
• Drive continuous improvement across development, quality, and delivery
• Evangelize Net App’s Kubernetes solution in open-source and industry settings
• Support adoption of proposed solutions through technical influence, documentation, and customer engagement

• Participate in technical discussions within the team and across business units on assigned projects
• Provide guidance on development and testing activities involving complex interdependencies
• Contribute to team, program, and company goals through hands-on engineering and technical leadership
• Design, implement, and deliver production-quality code
• Build and improve test automation
• Perform debugging, troubleshooting, and performance analysis
• Lead proof-of-concept work and R&D initiatives
• Enforce software design and development best practices through design and code reviews
• Learn and apply new technologies quickly
• Apply creative, practical approaches to solve complex technical problems

• 12+ years of relevant software engineering experience
• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience
• Strong coding skills in Go and Python
• Deep understanding of Kubernetes architecture, APIs, and ecosystem
• Solid foundation in computer architecture, data structures, algorithms, and software engineering practices
• Experience with hyperscaler platforms: AWS, GCP, and/or Azure
• Experience with Net App storage platforms and/or cloud-native storage solutions
• Strong written and verbal…