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 investment gaps, and converts market signals into specific bets the organization should place. The role reports to the VP of Growth, Analytics & AI Native Engineering, with a mandate to maximize return on the portfolio's investment.

This position carries no product P&L of its own; its influence comes from analytical rigor and trusted partnership with the CPO staff whose products it helps steer.

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, guiding the organization toward 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 advocate for resource reallocation.
• Evaluate material capability gaps with Product leadership and develop build, buy, or partner recommendations, making strategic, economic, and time-to-value tradeoffs explicit.
• Own the upstream corporate-development agenda from the product side, including acquisition thesis, target landscape, qualification, and business case development with Corporate Development and Finance.
• Lead product and technical diligence to test whether a target's capability, architecture, and economics deliver the thesis before capital commitment.
• Own product-side integration of acquired businesses, merging roadmaps, rationalizing overlap, and ensuring synergy realization.
• Develop and institutionalize product acquisition and integration playbooks tailored to acquisition types to accelerate time-to-value and reduce execution risk.
• Build, lead, and develop a high-caliber team of strategy, growth, and integration leaders who influence through insight and analytical rigor across Product, Engineering, Finance, Corporate Development, 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 in-house operating roles 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, with technical credibility across data infrastructure, cloud, and AI.
• Proven people leader and executive communicator, able to build high-caliber teams and influence senior stakeholders without 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 fall outside this range. Final compensation packages are competitive and reflect industry standards.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health insurance, life insurance, retirement or pension plans, and paid time off.
• Various leave options, performance-based incentives, and an employee stock purchase plan.
• Restricted stock units (RSUs), with all offerings subject to regional variations and governed by local laws and company policies.

Schedule

NetApp embraces a hybrid working environment designed to strengthen connection, collaboration, and culture. Most roles include 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. Our culture celebrates mold breakers, bold thinkers, and problem solvers. We reward initiative, impact, and ownership, providing flexibility to balance professional ambition with personal life. Differences drive everything we do, and we empower customers to run traditional workloads and enterprise AI with unmatched performance, resilience, and security.