Director of Platform Engineering & Operations

Own Every Moment at NetApp

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. Ready to innovate and contribute to our path to $10B? Here, you'll collaborate with passionate teams, tackle real-world challenges, and see your impact in how customers transform and grow. If you're ready to bring curiosity, creativity, and drive to every moment, NetApp is where your journey begins.

Job Summary

NetApp is seeking a strategic and execution-oriented Director of Platform Engineering & Operations to lead a global organization responsible for enterprise compute, storage, and DDI (DNS, DHCP, IPAM) services across on-premises and cloud environments.

Based in RTP, this leader will oversee a globally distributed team across Bangalore, San Jose, RTP, and other key sites. The role carries full lifecycle accountability across platform engineering and 24x7 operations, with a strong emphasis on modern infrastructure management practices, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD-driven infrastructure delivery, AI-Ops enablement, and enterprise-scale automation.

This leader will play a critical role in transforming and scaling NetApp’s internal infrastructure platforms to be resilient, secure, automated, and cloud-forward.

Job Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Vision

• Define and execute the strategy for enterprise compute, storage, and DDI platforms across hybrid (on-prem and cloud) environments.
• Drive modernization of infrastructure services using IaC, GitOps, CI/CD automation, and policy-as-code frameworks.
• Lead the evolution toward self-service platform models with clear service catalogs, SLOs, and reliability metrics.
• Partner with executive stakeholders across IT, Security, Engineering, and Product to align platform capabilities with business priorities.
• Establish multi-year roadmaps for infrastructure transformation, cost optimization, resilience, and scalability.

Platform Engineering (Build)

• Oversee architecture, engineering, and lifecycle management of:
  • On-prem and cloud-based compute platforms
  • On-prem and cloud-based storage platforms
  • Global DDI services (DNS, DHCP, IPAM)
  • Certificate lifecycle management
• Standardize infrastructure patterns across data centers and public cloud providers.
• Implement Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible, etc.) as the default operating model.
• Integrate infrastructure provisioning and lifecycle management into CI/CD pipelines.
• Drive cloud-native and hybrid design principles including automation-first, immutable infrastructure, and blue/green deployment patterns.
• Ensure platforms are secure-by-design and compliant with enterprise and regulatory standards.

Operations & Reliability (Run)

• Lead global 24x7 operations with clear accountability for uptime, performance, availability, and incident response.
• Implement and mature SRE-aligned practices including:
  • SLO/SLI frameworks
  • Error budgets
  • Proactive reliability engineering
• Drive continuous improvement through post-incident reviews and operational analytics.
• Own operational governance including capacity management, change management, and problem management.
• Ensure business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities are tested and validated.

AI-Ops & Automation

• Champion AI-Ops capabilities to enhance observability, predictive analytics, anomaly detection, and root cause automation.
• Integrate telemetry, logging, and monitoring platforms into unified operational dashboards.
• Leverage machine learning–driven insights to reduce MTTR and prevent incidents.
• Drive aggressive automation targets to reduce manual intervention and increase operational scalability.
• Promote event-driven remediation and self-healing infrastructure capabilities.

Global Team Leadership

• Lead and develop a large, geographically distributed organization across Bangalore, San Jose, RTP, and additional global locations.
• Build a high-performance culture grounded in accountability, innovation, and collaboration.
• Develop succession planning, leadership bench strength, and talent development programs.
• Foster a “follow-the-sun” support model for global operational excellence.
• Promote inclusive leadership and strong cross-regional collaboration.

Financial & Vendor Management

• Own budget planning, forecasting, and cost optimization across infrastructure platforms.
• Optimize cloud and on-prem infrastructure spend through FinOps practices.
• Manage strategic vendor relationships across compute, storage, networking, cloud, and DDI providers.
• Drive measurable efficiency gains through automation and standardization.

Job Requirements

• 12+ years of progressive experience in infrastructure engineering and operations.
• 7+ years of leadership experience managing global, distributed teams at scale.
• Deep expertise in:
  • Hybrid compute platforms (virtualization, containerization, public cloud IaaS/PaaS)
  • Enterprise storage technologies (block, file, object, hybrid architectures)
  • Global DDI services (enterprise DNS, DHCP, IPAM architectures)
• Demonstrated experience implementing Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD-driven infrastructure delivery.
• Proven track record driving automation at scale across enterprise infrastructure.
• Strong experience with AI-Ops platforms, observability stacks, and operational analytics.
• Experience leading both engineering (build) and operations (run) functions within a unified organization.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in a global technology or SaaS organization.
• Familiarity with NetApp storage technologies and hybrid cloud solutions.
• Strong understanding of security, compliance, and regulatory frameworks.
• Experience with FinOps methodologies and cloud cost governance.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent professional experience.

Leadership Competencies

• Strategic thinker with strong execution discipline
• Data-driven decision maker
• Change agent with transformation experience
• Collaborative cross-functional partner
• Talent builder and culture champion
• Customer-first mindset

Why You'll Thrive at NetApp

At NetApp, you won't wait for the perfect moment—you'll make it. The early planning, the extra thought, the bold idea that turns good into great: That's how our people operate and how we continue to push the boundaries of data infrastructure. NetApp is the trusted partner for organizations transforming data into opportunity. As the only enterprise-grade storage service natively embedded in Google Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft Azure, we empower customers to run everything from traditional workloads to enterprise AI with unmatched performance, resilience, and security.

Our culture

We celebrate mold breakers, bold thinkers, and problem solvers. We reward initiative, impact, and ownership. We provide flexibility so you can balance professional ambition with your personal life. Here, differences are not just welcomed—they drive everything we do.

Key skills/competency

• Platform Engineering
• Cloud Infrastructure
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
• CI/CD Automation
• AI-Ops
• SRE Practices
• Global Team Leadership
• Hybrid Cloud
• Enterprise Storage
• DDI Services (DNS, DHCP, IPAM)