Principal Systems Engineer Jobs in USA with Visa Sponsorship
Principal Systems Engineer roles qualify as H-1B visa specialty occupations, making them strong candidates for visa sponsorship. Defense, aerospace, and enterprise tech employers file LCAs regularly for this title. Your systems architecture experience and degree in engineering or computer science are the credentials that drive approvals.
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Get Access To All JobsINTRODUCTION
At NetApp, our High Achievement Principles shape how we work: we innovate to elevate, drive results, and excel as a team. We have a history of helping customers turn challenges into business opportunities. That’s because we bring new thinking to age-old problems, like how to use data most effectively in the most efficient possible way. As an Engineer with NetApp, you’ll have the opportunity to work with modern cloud and container orchestration technologies in a production setting. You’ll play an important role in scaling systems sustainably through automation and evolving them by pushing for changes to improve reliability and velocity.
Success profile
Ready to be an engineer at NetApp? Explore the traits that can help you thrive.
- Analytical
- Adaptable
- Communicator
- Detail-oriented
- Quick-thinking
- Problem solver
Responsibilities
San Jose, California, United States; Morrisville, North Carolina, United States
Job category: Software Engineering
Job ID: 137180-en_US
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. Join teams that innovate to elevate, drive results, and excel together across every function.
Job Summary
NetApp is building the next generation of intelligent data infrastructure to help organizations manage, protect, move, and unlock the value of their data across on-premises, hybrid-cloud, and AI environments.
We are seeking Senior, Principal and Distinguished Engineers and Technical Leaders to help architect, design, and build technologies that will evolve ONTAP for the AI era. You will solve complex systems challenges across distributed storage, file systems, data protection, drive/node failure resilience, performance, storage efficiency, AI data infrastructure, virtualization, and hardware.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role for engineers with deep expertise in one or more systems domains and the ability to solve problems across technical boundaries. You will work with engineering teams across ONTAP, WAFL, RAID, Storage, Platform, Performance, and Hardware to develop scalable, resilient, and high-performance solutions.
We are hiring across multiple Teams. These positions may be hired at the MTS5 or MTS6 level based on experience, technical depth, scope, and demonstrated impact.
- Architect and develop next-generation storage and data infrastructure technologies.
- Influence technical direction and architectural decisions across multiple engineering teams.
- Lead complex systems initiatives from architecture and design through development, optimization, and production delivery.
- Translate emerging AI, cloud, and enterprise infrastructure requirements into scalable technical solutions.
- Solve complex problems spanning distributed systems, file systems, metadata, data protection, performance, operating systems, networking, and hardware.
- Design highly available and fault-tolerant systems with strong consistency, resiliency, recovery, and performance characteristics.
- Analyze and optimize system performance across CPU, memory, networking, and storage.
- Mentor engineers and raise the technical bar through architecture, design, and code reviews.
- Lead root-cause analysis of complex cross-subsystem issues.
- Develop production-quality systems software using C, C++, or related systems programming languages.
Areas of Technical Expertise
We're looking for deep expertise in one or more of the following:
- Distributed and scale-out storage systems
- File systems, metadata, consistency, and recovery
- RAID, erasure coding, replication, and data protection
- Storage efficiency, compression, compaction, and deduplication
- AI data infrastructure, training/inference pipelines, RAG, and high-performance I/O
- Storage performance engineering, benchmarking, QoS, and workload characterization
- NVMe, SSD/HDD technologies, storage media, and commodity hardware
- Linux/UNIX/FreeBSD internals and kernel development
- Virtualization, hypervisors, RDMA, and high-performance networking
- Hybrid-cloud and cloud-native data infrastructure
Job Requirements
- 12+ years of software engineering experience designing and developing complex systems software, storage systems, file systems, distributed systems, operating systems, infrastructure software, or related technologies.
- Demonstrated experience architecting and delivering complex, production-quality systems.
- Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across teams and organizational boundaries.
- Deep expertise in at least one area of large-scale storage, distributed systems, or data infrastructure.
- Strong hands-on programming experience in C, C++, or comparable systems programming languages.
- Strong foundation in operating systems, computer architecture, networking, concurrency, storage, and distributed systems.
- Ability to analyze system-level interactions and make technical trade-offs across performance, scalability, reliability, resiliency, efficiency, and cost.
- Strong problem-solving and root-cause analysis skills for problems spanning multiple technical domains.
- Experience providing technical leadership and mentoring engineers.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience architecting large-scale distributed or highly available systems.
- Kernel-level software development and debugging experience.
- Experience with AI/ML infrastructure, GPU data pipelines, or high-performance I/O.
- Experience with performance engineering and benchmarking.
- Knowledge of NVMe, SSDs, HDDs, or commodity storage platforms.
- Experience with hypervisors, virtualization, RDMA, or cloud infrastructure.
- Track record of technical innovation through product architecture, patents, publications, or other significant technical contributions.
Education
Bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
Compensation
The target salary range for this position is 227,800 - 338,800 USD. The salary offered will be determined by the candidate's location, qualifications, experience, and education and may be outside of this range. Final compensation packages are competitive and in line with industry standards, reflecting a variety of factors, and include a comprehensive benefits package. This may cover Health Insurance, Life Insurance, Retirement or Pension Plans, Paid Time Off, various Leave options, Performance-Based Incentives, employee stock purchase plan, and/or restricted stocks (RSU’s), with all offerings subject to regional variations and governed by local laws, regulations, and company policies. Benefits may vary by country and region, and further details will be provided as part of the recruitment process.
At NetApp, we embrace a hybrid working environment designed to strengthen connection, collaboration, and culture for all employees. This means that most roles will have some level of in-office and/or in-person expectations, which will be shared during the recruitment process.
Equal Opportunity Employer:
NetApp is firmly committed to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and to compliance with all federal, state and local laws that prohibit employment discrimination based on age, race, color, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, disability or genetic information, pregnancy, protected veteran status, and any other protected classification.
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.
If you're ready to innovate, rise to the challenge, and own every moment - make your next move your best one. Apply now.
Submitting an Application
To ensure a streamlined and fair hiring process for all candidates, our team only reviews applications submitted through our company website. This practice allows us to track, assess, and respond to applicants efficiently. Emailing our employees, recruiters, or Human Resources personnel directly will not influence your application.
AI Disclosure
For select roles, some stages of our hiring process may use artificial intelligence tools to help evaluate applications and candidate selection. These tools support—rather than replace—human decision-making.
Our values
Put the customer at the center. Care for each other and our communities. Think and act like owners. Build belonging every day. Embrace a growth mindset.
Benefits
Volunteer time off
40 hours of paid volunteer time each year.
Well-being
Employee Assistance Program, fitness, and mental health resources to help employees be their best.
Time away
Paid time off for vacation and to recharge.
INTRODUCTION
At NetApp, our High Achievement Principles shape how we work: we innovate to elevate, drive results, and excel as a team. We have a history of helping customers turn challenges into business opportunities. That’s because we bring new thinking to age-old problems, like how to use data most effectively in the most efficient possible way. As an Engineer with NetApp, you’ll have the opportunity to work with modern cloud and container orchestration technologies in a production setting. You’ll play an important role in scaling systems sustainably through automation and evolving them by pushing for changes to improve reliability and velocity.
Success profile
Ready to be an engineer at NetApp? Explore the traits that can help you thrive.
- Analytical
- Adaptable
- Communicator
- Detail-oriented
- Quick-thinking
- Problem solver
Responsibilities
San Jose, California, United States; Morrisville, North Carolina, United States
Job category: Software Engineering
Job ID: 137180-en_US
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. Join teams that innovate to elevate, drive results, and excel together across every function.
Job Summary
NetApp is building the next generation of intelligent data infrastructure to help organizations manage, protect, move, and unlock the value of their data across on-premises, hybrid-cloud, and AI environments.
We are seeking Senior, Principal and Distinguished Engineers and Technical Leaders to help architect, design, and build technologies that will evolve ONTAP for the AI era. You will solve complex systems challenges across distributed storage, file systems, data protection, drive/node failure resilience, performance, storage efficiency, AI data infrastructure, virtualization, and hardware.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role for engineers with deep expertise in one or more systems domains and the ability to solve problems across technical boundaries. You will work with engineering teams across ONTAP, WAFL, RAID, Storage, Platform, Performance, and Hardware to develop scalable, resilient, and high-performance solutions.
We are hiring across multiple Teams. These positions may be hired at the MTS5 or MTS6 level based on experience, technical depth, scope, and demonstrated impact.
- Architect and develop next-generation storage and data infrastructure technologies.
- Influence technical direction and architectural decisions across multiple engineering teams.
- Lead complex systems initiatives from architecture and design through development, optimization, and production delivery.
- Translate emerging AI, cloud, and enterprise infrastructure requirements into scalable technical solutions.
- Solve complex problems spanning distributed systems, file systems, metadata, data protection, performance, operating systems, networking, and hardware.
- Design highly available and fault-tolerant systems with strong consistency, resiliency, recovery, and performance characteristics.
- Analyze and optimize system performance across CPU, memory, networking, and storage.
- Mentor engineers and raise the technical bar through architecture, design, and code reviews.
- Lead root-cause analysis of complex cross-subsystem issues.
- Develop production-quality systems software using C, C++, or related systems programming languages.
Areas of Technical Expertise
We're looking for deep expertise in one or more of the following:
- Distributed and scale-out storage systems
- File systems, metadata, consistency, and recovery
- RAID, erasure coding, replication, and data protection
- Storage efficiency, compression, compaction, and deduplication
- AI data infrastructure, training/inference pipelines, RAG, and high-performance I/O
- Storage performance engineering, benchmarking, QoS, and workload characterization
- NVMe, SSD/HDD technologies, storage media, and commodity hardware
- Linux/UNIX/FreeBSD internals and kernel development
- Virtualization, hypervisors, RDMA, and high-performance networking
- Hybrid-cloud and cloud-native data infrastructure
Job Requirements
- 12+ years of software engineering experience designing and developing complex systems software, storage systems, file systems, distributed systems, operating systems, infrastructure software, or related technologies.
- Demonstrated experience architecting and delivering complex, production-quality systems.
- Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across teams and organizational boundaries.
- Deep expertise in at least one area of large-scale storage, distributed systems, or data infrastructure.
- Strong hands-on programming experience in C, C++, or comparable systems programming languages.
- Strong foundation in operating systems, computer architecture, networking, concurrency, storage, and distributed systems.
- Ability to analyze system-level interactions and make technical trade-offs across performance, scalability, reliability, resiliency, efficiency, and cost.
- Strong problem-solving and root-cause analysis skills for problems spanning multiple technical domains.
- Experience providing technical leadership and mentoring engineers.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience architecting large-scale distributed or highly available systems.
- Kernel-level software development and debugging experience.
- Experience with AI/ML infrastructure, GPU data pipelines, or high-performance I/O.
- Experience with performance engineering and benchmarking.
- Knowledge of NVMe, SSDs, HDDs, or commodity storage platforms.
- Experience with hypervisors, virtualization, RDMA, or cloud infrastructure.
- Track record of technical innovation through product architecture, patents, publications, or other significant technical contributions.
Education
Bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
Compensation
The target salary range for this position is 227,800 - 338,800 USD. The salary offered will be determined by the candidate's location, qualifications, experience, and education and may be outside of this range. Final compensation packages are competitive and in line with industry standards, reflecting a variety of factors, and include a comprehensive benefits package. This may cover Health Insurance, Life Insurance, Retirement or Pension Plans, Paid Time Off, various Leave options, Performance-Based Incentives, employee stock purchase plan, and/or restricted stocks (RSU’s), with all offerings subject to regional variations and governed by local laws, regulations, and company policies. Benefits may vary by country and region, and further details will be provided as part of the recruitment process.
At NetApp, we embrace a hybrid working environment designed to strengthen connection, collaboration, and culture for all employees. This means that most roles will have some level of in-office and/or in-person expectations, which will be shared during the recruitment process.
Equal Opportunity Employer:
NetApp is firmly committed to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and to compliance with all federal, state and local laws that prohibit employment discrimination based on age, race, color, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, disability or genetic information, pregnancy, protected veteran status, and any other protected classification.
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.
If you're ready to innovate, rise to the challenge, and own every moment - make your next move your best one. Apply now.
Submitting an Application
To ensure a streamlined and fair hiring process for all candidates, our team only reviews applications submitted through our company website. This practice allows us to track, assess, and respond to applicants efficiently. Emailing our employees, recruiters, or Human Resources personnel directly will not influence your application.
AI Disclosure
For select roles, some stages of our hiring process may use artificial intelligence tools to help evaluate applications and candidate selection. These tools support—rather than replace—human decision-making.
Our values
Put the customer at the center. Care for each other and our communities. Think and act like owners. Build belonging every day. Embrace a growth mindset.
Benefits
Volunteer time off
40 hours of paid volunteer time each year.
Well-being
Employee Assistance Program, fitness, and mental health resources to help employees be their best.
Time away
Paid time off for vacation and to recharge.
See all 1,636+ Principal Systems Engineer Jobs
Sign up for free to unlock all listings, filter by visa type, and get alerts for new Principal Systems Engineer roles.
Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding Visa Sponsorship as a Principal Systems Engineer
Align your degree to systems engineering
Consular officers and USCIS adjudicators look for a direct link between your degree field and the role. A degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or systems engineering maps cleanly. A general business or unrelated degree creates RFE risk you'll need to address upfront.
Target employers with active LCA history
Defense contractors, semiconductor firms, and enterprise infrastructure companies file LCAs for Principal Systems Engineer roles at much higher rates than startups. Use Migrate Mate to browse verified sponsoring employers by role so you're applying where approvals are already happening.
Request prevailing wage documentation early
Your employer must file an LCA certifying your offered salary meets the DOL prevailing wage for your location and experience level. Cross-check the wage tier using the OFLC Wage Search before accepting an offer so there are no surprises during filing.
Clarify your security clearance status before applying
Many Principal Systems Engineer roles in defense and government contracting require security clearances that most visa holders can't hold. Screen job descriptions for clearance requirements early so you focus your search on positions your status actually permits.
Get your systems architecture experience documented precisely
USCIS expects the job duties to require a specific bachelor's degree, not any technical degree. Ask your employer to draft the offer letter with duties tied explicitly to systems design, integration, and architecture rather than broad engineering tasks, which strengthens the specialty occupation argument.
Understand H-1B cap timing for your start date
H-1B petitions are subject to an annual lottery with rules that have changed recently. If you're not already in H-1B status, your start date can't be before October 1 of the fiscal year your petition covers. Build this timeline into your negotiation with the hiring team.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a Principal Systems Engineer role qualify as an H-1B specialty occupation?
Yes. Principal Systems Engineer is a well-established specialty occupation because the role normally requires at least a bachelor's degree in a directly related field such as systems engineering, electrical engineering, or computer science. USCIS looks at whether the job duties require that specific degree, not just any technical background. Senior-level titles with architecture and integration responsibilities typically satisfy this requirement without additional justification.
Which visa types are realistic for Principal Systems Engineer candidates?
H-1B is the most common path and covers the broadest range of employers. Australian nationals can use the E-3 visa, which has no lottery and a cap that has never been exhausted. Canadian and Mexican nationals may qualify for TN visa status, as engineers appear on the USMCA profession list. For candidates already in H-1B status, an EB-2 or EB-3 green card through PERM labor certification is a natural next step given the advanced degree most Principal Systems Engineers hold.
Do defense or government contractor roles create sponsorship problems?
They can. Many Principal Systems Engineer positions at defense contractors and federal agencies require security clearances that visa holders are generally ineligible to obtain. Some positions are also restricted to U.S. citizens by contract or federal regulation. Screen each job description for clearance language and ask the recruiter directly whether the specific role is open to visa holders before investing time in the process.
How do I find Principal Systems Engineer jobs where employers are already sponsoring?
Migrate Mate shows verified sponsoring employers for Principal Systems Engineer roles, so you can focus your search on companies that have already filed for this title rather than guessing at willingness. That's the fastest way to avoid applying to employers who won't sponsor at all.
Does a three-year engineering degree from outside the U.S. satisfy the specialty occupation requirement?
USCIS evaluates foreign degrees against their U.S. equivalents. A three-year engineering degree from Australia, the UK, or India is often accepted as equivalent to a U.S. four-year bachelor's when assessed by a credential evaluation agency. The evaluation report becomes part of your petition package. If your degree is in a related but not identical field, your employer may also rely on O*NET to support the specialty occupation argument.
What is the prevailing wage requirement for sponsored Principal Systems Engineer jobs?
U.S. employers sponsoring a visa must pay at least the prevailing wage, which is what workers in the same role, area, and experience level typically earn. The Department of Labor sets this rate to make sure companies aren't hiring foreign workers simply because they'd accept lower pay than a U.S. worker. It varies by job title, location, and experience. You can look up current prevailing wage rates for any occupation and location using the OFLC Wage Search page.