VP of Engineering, Storage Protocols

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. Collaborate with passionate teams, tackle real-world challenges, and see your impact in how customers transform and grow.

About the role

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 Storage 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 authority, a seat in executive strategy discussions, and a mandate to shape how NetApp's protocol stack evolves to meet the next generation of workloads.

Reports to: SVP of Platform Engineering. Location: Remote-friendly, with meaningful time expected in San Jose, CA.

Responsibilities

• 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.
• 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—partnering closely with Product Management 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.
• Building and retaining a high-performing, multi-layered engineering leadership team across File, Block, Object, and StorageGRID.
• 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.

Requirements

• 15+ years of engineering leadership in storage, infrastructure, or platform software, including 8+ years leading multiple layers of engineering management.
• 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.

Qualifications

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

Pay

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.

Benefits

• Health Insurance
• Life Insurance
• Retirement or Pension Plans
• Paid Time Off and various Leave options
• Performance-Based Incentives
• Employee stock purchase plan and/or restricted stocks (RSUs)

Benefits may vary by country and region, and further details will be provided as part of the recruitment process.

Schedule

NetApp embraces a hybrid working environment designed to strengthen connection, collaboration, and culture for all employees. Most roles will have some level of in-office and/or in-person expectations, which will be shared during the recruitment process.