Sr Director, Strategy & Operations

About the Role

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. This Chief Product Officer role sets the direction for a multi-billion-dollar portfolio spanning data infrastructure, storage, cloud, and AI. As the strategy partner, this leader sharpens the portfolio point of view, exposes under-invested or exposed areas, and converts ambiguous market and financial signals into specific bets. The role reports to the VP of Growth, Analytics & AI Native Engineering, with a mandate to maximize the return on the portfolio's investment.

This role carries no product P&L of its own; its influence comes from the rigor of its analysis and the trust of the CPO staff whose products it helps steer. The leader partners with Product leadership to shape product portfolio investment priorities, combining market, customer, financial, and product insights with NetApp's cost, ROI, and investment models to identify high-value opportunities and recommend resource allocation shifts.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the CPO's strategy partner, turning portfolio direction into a sharp, evidence-based point of view on where the organization should invest, hold, or exit.
• Expose the portfolio's gaps, overlaps, and white space, and guide the organization toward the bets with the clearest path to revenue and margin.
• Shape portfolio investment priorities in partnership with Product Leadership, leveraging NetApp's cost, ROI, and product-investment models to make the case for moving resources to their highest-return use.
• Evaluate material capability gaps with Product leadership and develop build, buy, or partner recommendations, making the strategic, economic, and time-to-value implications explicit for the product owners’ investment decisions.
• Own the upstream corporate-development agenda from the product side, from acquisition thesis and target landscape through qualification and the business case built with Corporate Development and Finance and validated with CPO staff.
• Lead diligence through the product and technical lens, testing whether a target's capability, architecture, and economics deliver the thesis before capital is committed.
• Own product-side integration of acquired businesses, working through the inheriting teams to merge roadmaps, rationalize overlapping products and platforms, and hold the line on synergy realization.
• Develop and institutionalize product acquisition and integration playbooks that tailor integration plans to the type of acquisition, accelerating time-to-value, reducing execution risk, and improving ROI.
• Build, lead, and develop a high-caliber team of strategy, growth, and integration leaders who influence through insight, analytical rigor, and trusted partnership across Product, Engineering, Corporate Development, Finance, and GTM.

Requirements

• 12+ years of experience spanning product strategy, corporate strategy, corporate development partnership, and senior operating leadership roles within enterprise technology.
• Proven success shaping portfolio strategy, driving business and portfolio transformation, and influencing enterprise investment decisions through data-driven insight and executive partnership; combined experience across top-tier consulting and operating in-house within a scaled technology company preferred.
• Experience leading inorganic growth initiatives, including acquisition strategy, diligence, integration, and value realization; product-side integration expertise strongly preferred.
• Deep fluency in technology business economics, portfolio investment, capital allocation, and growth strategy, combined with technical credibility across data infrastructure, cloud, and AI.
• A proven people leader and executive communicator, able to build a high-caliber team and move senior stakeholders across Product, Engineering, Finance, Corporate Development, and GTM without relying on formal authority.
• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Business, or a related field required; MBA preferred.

Pay

The target salary range for this position is $266,050 - $396,000 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.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health insurance, life insurance, retirement or pension plans, and paid time off.
• Various leave options and performance-based incentives.
• Employee stock purchase plan and/or restricted stocks (RSUs).

Benefits may vary by country and region, and further details will be provided as part of the recruitment process.

Schedule

At NetApp, we embrace a hybrid working environment designed to strengthen connection, collaboration, and culture for all employees. Most roles will have some level of in-office and/or in-person expectations, which will be shared during the recruitment process.

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.

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.