Position: Technical Director, Core Engineering
Location: Sunnyvale, CA

Job Summary:
Core Engineering at NetApp is responsible for developing and supporting
the company’s crown jewel, the WAFL file system. As a Technical Director
of NetApp’s Core Engineering group, you hold the most senior position in
the R&D function as an individual contributor. You provide strong
leadership and a strategic consultative role to the organization as
related to driving product development and strategy. As part of the
Research and Development function, the overall focus of the group is on
competitive market and customer requirements, technology advances,
product quality, product cost and time-to-market. The Software
Development function is responsible for enhancements to existing
products as well as new product development.

To be considered for this role, your competencies must include:

- Deep technical expertise as demonstrated by a track record of
technology leadership in storage, kernel development and/or file
systems. Ideally you will have extensive knowledge of system
architecture, OS architectures, data structures and/or embedded
software. You must also have demonstrated the capability to continually
learn new technology, as coming up to speed quickly on the WAFL
architecture will be critical to your success. Demonstrated leadership
into new areas of technology is key, as shown by previous developments
and patents. The TD at NetApp is expected to innovate constantly, to be
a source of new ideas as well as to be the team’s advocate inside the
company and with customers. An ability to “spread the credit” for new
ideas is a must to fit in with the NetApp culture.

- Results Orientation. At the end of the day, what matters is
bringing products to market. Ideas that can be brought to market that
improve the customer experience, increase the profitability of the
company, or change the way the industry works are what matters at
NetApp. In that vein, the person we are looking for will have a track
record of generating and evaluating cost/benefit analyses of various
architectural solutions to a problem. To work well in this role, you
should have both a strategic orientation and a passion for rolling up
your sleeves and work with the engineering team, providing leadership
and guidance to bring products to market faster.

- Strategic Orientation. A key part of the Technical Director’s
job at NetApp is to take a strategic view of the market. You will have
demonstrated an ability to look out over a 3-5 year time horizon and
make decisions about technology to be developed today that will have a
long-lasting influence on the company’s success. This comes from staying
close to customers, competitors and cutting-edge university research in
order to maintain technology lead. Our goal is to be 2-3 years ahead of
our competition. In areas where development does not make sense, the
company may choose to “buy” the technology in the form of an
acquisition. TD’s play a key role in evaluating potential acquisitions
for the company.

- Collaboration and Influencing. As an individual contributor,
your success or failure depends as much on your ability to sell your
ideas as it does on your pure technical knowledge. In addition to
reporting directly to the Senior Director for Core Engineering, you will
also have a dotted line responsibility into the CTO organization. The
CTO organization meets regularly and sets the overall technical
direction for the company. Being able to work in such an
environment-being able to collaborate with your peers as well as other
engineers-is a key skill of NetApp’s TD’s. In addition, you need to be
able to demonstrate an ability to influence other TD’s, engineering
leaders and the CTO about the best ways to proceed with a new
development or where to invest resources.

Essential Functions:
- A major part of your responsibility will be to work on issues
that impact development success or address future concepts, products or
technologies.

- Provide future technical vision to the function as well as the
organization as a whole.

- Successfully negotiate strategic and other issues which effect
the business internally and externally

- Must be a seasoned communicator and presenter.

- Maintain affiliations and relationships with academic and
industry technical experts globally, and serve as external spokesperson
for the company.

- Provide leadership and guidance to senior engineers.

Job Requirements:
- Experience as a Chief Architect or a CTO, with deep knowledge
and passion for storage systems development, file systems and/or
operating systems.

- Strong technical depth in storage, kernel development and/or
file systems.

- Excellent oral and written communication skills are essential,
particularly presentation skills.

- Ability to work collaboratively with other engineers and
senior professionals across functions; and have strong influencing and
leadership skills.

- Recognized expert in software design and development.

- A strong understanding of the most complex concepts related to
computer architecture, data structures and programming practices.

- Ability to conceptualize and communicate extremely complex
projects and champion new product developments.

Education and Experience:
- A minimum of 15+ years of experience is required.

- A Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering or
Computer Science, a Master Degree, or a PhD; or equivalent experience is
required.

- Demonstrated ability to have completed multiple, extremely
complex technical projects.

Contact:
Petra Pino
Sr. Staffing Partner
NetApp
petra DOT pino AT netapp DOT com
www.netapp.com
408.822.6984