VP of Engineering, Storage Protocols

VP of Engineering Distributed Storage Services & Protocols

The Opportunity

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 Distributed Storage Services & Protocols youll 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 influence shaping direction in close partnership with principal architects a seat in executive strategy discussions and a mandate to build and sustain a high-performing engineering organization that can meet the next generation of workloads.

Role:

Reports to: SVP of Platform Engineering

Location: Remote-friendly were flexible on where youre based. Our senior leadership team is primarily based in San Jose CA and this role should expect to spend meaningful time there.

Scope: Leads engineering across File Block Object and StorageGRID protocol teams an organization of roughly 350 engineers.

What you will Own

• Technical strategy and execution across ONTAPs File (NFS SMB multiprotocol) Block (iSCSI FC NVMe/TCP NVMe/FC) and Object (S3) protocol teams plus the StorageGRID engineering organization.
• Building developing and retaining a high-performing multi-layered engineering leadership team across File Block Object and StorageGRID with real focus on sustainable team health and long-term retention not just delivery velocity.
• 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 in close partnership with Product Management and principal architects 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.
• 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 NetApps technical narrative on object and metadata architecture for neocloud customers.

Required

• 15 years of engineering leadership in storage infrastructure or platform software including 8 years leading multiple layers of engineering management with a track record of building distributed horizontally scalable and fault-tolerant systems.
• 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.

Strongly Preferred

• Experience with hyperscaler/public-cloud architecture with a proven track record of deploying large-scale distributed systems.
• 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.

Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science Electrical Engineering or a related field.