Senior Open Source Software Engineer - Apache Cassandra

About the Role

Join NetApp as a Senior Open Source Software Engineer with a focus on Apache Cassandra. You will work at the forefront of innovation in intelligent data infrastructure, contributing to one of the largest enterprise Cassandra deployments globally. This role involves shaping both upstream Apache Cassandra development and delivery of production-scale results for a managed services platform serving diverse sectors such as financial services, retail, and technology.

Responsibilities

• Lead comprehensive upstream Apache Cassandra initiatives, handling tasks from authoring Cassandra Enhancement Proposals (CEPs) to design consensus, implementation, reviews, and official releases, including areas like storage engine compaction, indexing and vector support, distributed repair, observability, and release management.
• Provide authoritative code review and technical guidance on patches and community contributions to maintain high-quality standards within the Apache Cassandra project.
• Co-manage Apache Cassandra core release processes as part of a rotating committer group and contribute to ecosystem-related releases such as Sidecar, Analytics, and GoCQL.
• Transform enterprise customer requirements into viable upstream proposals with CEP-level design and sustained technical engagement, advising product and field teams on challenging upstream trade-offs.
• Influence community project direction through active participation on mailing lists, issue trackers, code repositories, and forums, guiding architectural decisions, release policies, contribution standards, and long-term project roadmaps.
• Mentor engineers to achieve committer status, uphold rigorous review protocols, test disciplines, and clear engineering best practices to maintain contribution quality.
• Enhance upstream project infrastructure by improving continuous integration reliability, test coverage, contributor tooling, and release automation to streamline maintenance efforts and reinforce NetApp's standing as a project steward.

Qualifications

• At least 12 years of professional software engineering experience, with significant expertise in Java development for performance-critical, concurrent, and distributed production systems.
• Current recognized Apache Cassandra committer with a demonstrable and active track record of patches, reviews, and community leadership in Cassandra core or related subprojects.
• Profound knowledge of Apache Cassandra internals in a core domain such as storage engine, indexing, distributed consensus, observability, or release management.
• Proven capability to lead complex technical discussions and deliverables through the Apache open source governance model, including CEP authoring, design consensus building, and issue tracking management.
• Excellent written communication skills suitable for asynchronous global collaboration, including technical documentation, mailing lists, code reviews, and issue discussions.
• Strong senior-level technical judgment, able to independently resolve obstacles, direct approach on ambiguous challenges, surface systemic risks, and align outputs with project goals.

Preferred Attributes

• Membership in the Apache Cassandra Project Management Committee (PMC) or closely related Apache projects.
• Experience contributing to Cassandra 6.0 features such as Accord, Transactional Metadata, automated repair processes, and advanced compression or vector indexing.
• History of mentoring contributors towards higher project roles such as reviewers or committers.
• Familiarity with related Cassandra ecosystem projects including Sidecar, Spark Analytics, GoCQL, or driver development.

Additional Information

NetApp fosters a hybrid work environment balancing in-office and remote collaboration, which will be clarified during recruitment. This role may require travel up to 10% of the time. NetApp is an equal opportunity employer, committed to diversity and compliance with all relevant anti-discrimination laws.

The hiring process includes submissions exclusively through the company website, with the use of AI-supported tools in some stages to assist human decision-making.