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

The VP of Engineering for Storage Protocols will 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 enterprise workloads running without compromise. This is a build-and-lead role with deep technical ownership at VP scope, including architectural authority and a seat in executive strategy discussions.

Reports to: SVP of Platform Engineering
Location: Remote-friendly, with meaningful time expected in San Jose, CA
Scope: Leads engineering across File, Block, Object, and StorageGRID protocol teams (~350 engineers).

Responsibilities

• 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 StorageGRID engineering.
• Define the architectural roadmap for object storage across the portfolio, ensuring differentiation and integration between performance-oriented ONTAP S3 and capacity/throughput-oriented StorageGRID object storage.
• Shape the technical roadmap for multiprotocol data access, balancing enterprise workload modernization with emerging AI/ML training, inference, and data-lakehouse use cases.
• Drive reliability, performance, and scale for the protocol stack, including executive-level ownership of major customer escalations involving protocol behavior at scale.
• Lead standards participation and protocol compliance (NFS, SMB, iSCSI, FC, NVMe, S3) to maintain interoperability across enterprise and hyperscaler ecosystems.
• Design organizational structure for protocol and control-plane capabilities within Platform Engineering, grounded in evidence like backlog composition and ownership boundaries.
• Build and retain a high-performing, multi-layered engineering leadership team across File, Block, Object, and StorageGRID.
• Partner closely with peer engineering leaders across ONTAP Core, Manageability, and Data Replication (MetroCluster, SnapMirror) to maintain architectural coherence.
• Contribute to 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 others.
• Proven track record of resolving ambiguous, cross-organizational architectural and org-design questions.
• Experience leading large-scale customer escalations to resolution across engineering, support, and field teams.
• Excellent executive communication skills, with the ability to represent complex technical tradeoffs clearly to senior leadership and partner effectively with Product Management.

Qualifications

• Strongly preferred: Experience building storage or data infrastructure for AI/ML workloads (training, inference, or data pipelines).
• Strongly preferred: Experience restructuring or right-sizing engineering teams based on evidence rather than assumption.
• Strongly preferred: A leadership style grounded in developing others, not positional authority.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.

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. Final compensation packages are competitive and include a comprehensive benefits package.

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. Most roles will have some level of in-office and/or in-person expectations, which will be shared during the recruitment process.