Principal Software Engineer at NetApp
Morrisville, NC
$227,800–$338,000from the description
Jul 29, 2026
Morrisville, NC
Sep 26, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
This role is on the team behind Trident, NetApp's open-source dynamic storage provisioner for Kubernetes. The engineer will own architectural decisions for Kubernetes storage and data protection capabilities, contribute code in Go and Python, engage with upstream open-source communities, and help drive customer adoption. It suits a deeply experienced systems engineer with strong Kubernetes and cloud platform knowledge who can also provide technical leadership across teams.
Senior level · 12+ years · San Jose, CA · Bachelor's required · Full-time
Advertised as Principal, but the requirements read as Senior.
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 490 people in the San Jose, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 370–640
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $217,796 (middle half $177,469–$231,052). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Aug 1, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (5)
The job title is 'Principal Engineer', but the requirements (12+ years, single-team technical leadership, no explicit org-wide authority) are consistent with a Senior individual contributor rather than a true Principal-level scope. The seniority band is set to Senior accordingly.
AWS, GCP, and Azure are listed together as a single 'Hyper Scaler technologies' requirement in the Qualifications section. They are emitted as three separate required skills (each with the others as alternatives) since the posting treats them as a group requirement rather than demanding all three independently.
NetApp storage / cloud native storage platforms appears in the Qualifications section but is framed as 'experience with' rather than a hard gate — treated as preferred.
A Master's degree is listed as preferred ('with less additional experience'), so the degree requirement is set to the hard minimum of Bachelor's.
The posting states a hybrid working environment with some in-office expectations but does not specify a primary office location beyond NetApp's general presence; the CBSA is estimated as San Jose, CA (NetApp's headquarters), but the actual location may differ and will be clarified during recruitment.
Read the full posting
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