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NetApp is the intelligent data infrastructure company, turning a world of disruption into opportunity for every customer. No matter the data type, workload or environment, we help our customers identify and realize new business possibilities. And it all starts with our people.
If this sounds like something you want to be part of, NetApp is the place for you. You can help bring new ideas to life, approaching each challenge with fresh eyes. Of course, you won't be doing it alone. At NetApp, we're all about asking for help when we need it, collaborating with others, and partnering across the organization - and beyond.
Sr. Developer Advocate - AI and Open Source
United StatesJob Summary
Instaclustr is looking for a Senior Developer Advocate to join our team to focus on the intersection of AI and our open source technologies. You should be an AI technical expert who creates content that is easy for customers and the community to consume and use. To be effective in this role, you must have a passion for creating technical content that educates, inspires, and empowers developers.
As part of NetApp, Instaclustr empowers companies to run powerful open-source technologies like Apache Cassandra, Apache Kafka, PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, and OpenSearch—at scale and with confidence. Our platform handles everything from provisioning to production reliability, so our customers can focus on building great applications. By leveraging our proven platform-based delivery, open source innovation, and NetApp storage, we’re uniquely positioned to lead in hyperscaler-agnostic application data infrastructure for agentic AI.
As a Senior Developer Advocate, you will be the bridge between the AI developer community and our product organization. You will use your deep understanding of AI technologies, open source data platforms, and agentic AI architectures to champion Instaclustr's managed services (Apache Cassandra, Apache Kafka, Cadence, PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, and OpenSearch) as essential infrastructure for modern AI applications. Your work will directly support the product management team's AI market segment strategy by creating compelling technical narratives, validating use cases through hands-on demonstrations, and gathering critical feedback from the developer community.
You will author compelling developer content—demos, code samples, blogs, and vlogs—that showcases how AI initiatives can be powered by open source technologies managed by NetApp. Through presentations at industry events and engagement across developer channels, you’ll demonstrate how to integrate these technologies effectively. Your work will build trust in NetApp Instaclustr as the best place to run data infrastructure for AI, removing barriers to execution and helping developers, customers, and partners maximize impact. You’ll also serve as a bridge between the community and product teams, sharing insights to improve the overall experience.
Job Responsibilities
Developer Community Engagement & Advocacy
- Build and nurture relationships with AI developers, ML engineers, and architects working on agentic AI applications and data-intensive AI workloads
- Serve as the voice of AI developers within Instaclustr, providing product management with continuous feedback on developer needs, pain points, and emerging use cases
- Engage with open source AI communities around key technologies including Apache Kafka, Apache Cassandra, Cadence, PostgreSQL, OpenSearch, and ClickHouse at industry conferences, meetups, webinars, and online communities
Technical Content Creation & Evangelism
- Develop high-quality technical content (tutorials, demos, code samples, blog posts, videos) that demonstrates how to build AI applications using Instaclustr's managed platform, in close collaboration with our Sr. Product Manager to translate product vision and market narratives into content that resonates with developers.
- Create reference architectures and solution patterns for common agentic AI use cases (RAG pipelines, vector search, real-time AI inference, AI data pipelines)
- Produce compelling demonstrations that showcase the integration of Instaclustr portfolio with popular AI tools and frameworks
Responsibilities continued
Product-Aligned Developer Experience
- Work closely with the Sr. Product Manager – AI Market Segment to ensure developer advocacy efforts align with segment strategy and business goals
- Validate product hypotheses through hands-on prototyping and developer feedback, supporting the PM's customer discovery and experimentation efforts
- Contribute to the "working backwards" product development process by articulating developer perspectives and technical requirements
Technical Leadership & Expertise
- Serve as a subject matter expert on AI infrastructure requirements, including data pipelines, vector databases, streaming platforms, and operational data stores for AI applications
- Stay current with emerging AI technologies, frameworks, and architectural patterns, providing insights to product and engineering teams
- Troubleshoot technical challenges faced by developers using Instaclustr for AI workloads and escalate product gaps or opportunities to product management
- Collaborate with engineering teams to improve developer experience, API design, and integration patterns
Required Experience & Education
- Production experience with AI technologies and frameworks (eg LangChain/LangGraph), vector databases and embeddings
- Hands-on experience building agentic AI applications, RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) systems, or LLM-powered applications
- Understanding and experience with AI data pipelines and MLOps practices
- Knowledge of streaming architectures and event-driven systems for AI applications
- Strong experience with open source data platforms such as Apache Kafka, Apache Cassandra, PostgreSQL, Cadence, OpenSearch, ClickHouse, or similar technologies
- Excellent written, verbal, and video communication skills with a portfolio of technical content (blogs, talks, tutorials, open source contributions)
- Active participation in open source communities with visible contributions (GitHub profile, conference talks, blog posts)
- Background in developer relations, developer advocacy, technical evangelism, solution architecture, or software engineering
- Ability to work cross-functionally with product management, engineering, and go-to-market teams with limited supervision
- Willingness to travel 20-30% of the time for conferences, conventions, customer meetings, and partner engagements
- Bachelor's degree in a technical/engineering field; or additional required experience in place of education requirement
Successful Metrics
Success in the Role: Success in this role at 6 months will be measured by the publication of impactful technical content (e.g., 3+ tutorials, demos, or reference architectures), delivery of 2+ presentations at industry events, and the establishment of a strong presence in AI developer communities. The role also requires building trusted relationships across cross-functional teams, informing the product roadmap with strategic insights on AI trends, tailoring content to diverse audiences, and exercising sound judgment in addressing technical challenges and developer needs.
Compensation:
The target salary range for this position is $190,000-250,000. 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 (PTO), 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 NetApp?
We are all about helping customers turn challenges into business opportunity. It starts with bringing new thinking to age-old problems, like how to use data most effectively to run better - but also to innovate. We tailor our approach to the customer's unique needs with a combination of fresh thinking and proven approaches.
We enable a healthy work-life balance. Our volunteer time off program is best in class, offering employees 40 hours of paid time per year to volunteer with their favorite organizations. We provide comprehensive medical, dental, wellness, and vision plans for you and your family. We offer educational assistance, legal services, and access to discounts. Finally, we provide financial savings programs to help you plan for your future.
If you want to help us build knowledge and solve big problems, let's talk.
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.
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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. We pledge to take every reasonable step to ensure that our applicants and employees are respected, treated fairly and with dignity. See the EEO poster, Know your rights poster, and NetApp EEO policy. NetApp makes reasonable accommodations, consistent with applicable laws, for religious purposes and for the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified applicant or employee with a disability, who can perform the essential job functions unless undue hardship would result.
State-specific postings/notices to applicants regarding contract compliance can be found here in English and here in Spanish, and fair employment practice information can be found here.
Reasonable Accommodations
At NetApp, we are committed to fostering an inclusive and accessible workplace where individuals with disabilities can thrive. In alignment with our values, NetApp provides reasonable accommodations and adjustments where possible to qualified applicants and employees with disabilities, in accordance with employment rights and regulations relevant to their country of employment, to ensure equal access to employment opportunities and job performance.
Applicants who would like to request an accommodation or adjustment are encouraged to Contact Us. Each request will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, in accordance with applicable laws and our commitment to equity and belonging within our culture, values and business practices. Requests will be handled confidentially and respectfully, and we will work collaboratively to identify effective solutions.
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Please note that we do not accept unsolicited resumes to the above email address.
Data privacy
We care about your privacy and, therefore, ask that you read our Candidate Privacy Notice before you submit any personal information to us.
NetApp does not carry out any solely automated decision making (i.e. the process of making a decision by automated means without any human involvement) in determining your suitability or eligibility for specific roles.
However, the processing of your personal information is carried out with the aid of manual and automated tools. In particular, NetApp may use an automated employment evaluation tool or similar tool as one of several tools, actions, and/or steps to assist with NetApp’s review of candidate applications for various hiring needs. Currently, when addressing certain hiring needs, NetApp uses the Eightfold tool which can provide an initial ranking of a candidate’s skills and experience, based on information provided by the applicant in the application and/or supporting documentation, in comparison to the NetApp designated key requirements of a specific role. Additionally, the tool may be used to help review and/or rank internal employees seeking promotion or other internal mobility. However, our talent acquisition team or our recruiters will ultimately select the candidates for further consideration, following human review of any automated evaluation results and associated underlying documentation (or lack thereof) submitted with the candidates’ application.
An independent audit of the Eightfold Matching Model tool can be found at https://eightfold.ai/nyc-eightfoldmatching-model.
Candidates may request an alternative selection process which will not be subject to the Eightfold matching tool or to any electronic automated employment evaluation by contacting NetApp at careers@netapp.com. To bypass the Eightfold matching tool or any electronic automated employment evaluation, you must include a resume and job ID with your email to careers@netapp.com and you must include in the subject line of your email: Data Privacy Request. Candidates who have questions or want to request additional information on the source of data, type of data, and/or collection of data related to the candidate review process should contact NetApp at careers@netapp.com
Submitting an application
To ensure a streamlined and fair hiring process for all candidates, our team reviews applications submitted through our company website only. 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.