Principal Software Engineer
NetApp · Baltimore, MD
$220,000–$372,000from the description
Jul 9, 2026
Baltimore, MD
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior individual-contributor role focused on designing and building cloud-native SaaS services that run across major public cloud providers. Day-to-day work spans architectural leadership, hands-on coding, and mentoring engineers, with a strong emphasis on storage protocols, data management systems, and fault-tolerant distributed architectures. Best suited to a deeply experienced engineer comfortable operating at both the system-design and implementation levels.
Senior level · 12+ years · National · Bachelor's required · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
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
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 $138,970 (middle half $107,524–$175,762). 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 Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (9)
Location is not specified in the posting; the compensation range ($220K–$372K/year) and NetApp's US headquarters suggest a US-based role, but the JD notes salary may vary by candidate location and country, so this could be open to multiple geographies.
The role is classified as an individual-contributor (IC) Software Developer rather than a manager. The JD explicitly labels it 'IC' and mentions mentoring/coaching as a responsibility, but there is no indication of direct reports, headcount ownership, or budget authority.
The alt SOC (11-3021) is noted because the role carries significant architectural direction-setting and team-coaching responsibilities that border on technical leadership, though the explicit 'IC' label and hands-on coding emphasis keep it in the developer classification.
The education section states a Bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline is required; a Master's is preferred with reduced experience. Degree requirement is set to Bachelor's as the hard minimum.
The experience requirement is complex: the Education section cites '15 years minimum for IC' while the Job Requirements section states '12+ years.' The lower, more specific figure (12) from the Requirements section is used as the overall years minimum.
Programming languages (C, C++, Go, Node.js, Python) are listed together as proficiency options; they are treated as a single requirement with alternatives since the JD does not require all of them.
File/cloud storage protocols (NFS, SMB, iSCSI) are listed as a group; NFS is used as the primary with SMB and iSCSI as alternatives since any one satisfies the requirement.
Cloud hyperscaler requirement (Azure, AWS, GCP) requires at least one; AWS is listed as primary with Azure and GCP as alternatives.
Ignored 2 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): cloud-native architecture, service-oriented architecture.
Read the full posting
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