Director, Product Mgmt

Job Summary

The Director of Product Management for AI & Open Source Data Platforms will lead the vision, strategy, and execution of products that sit at the intersection of enterprise AI, cloud scale data infrastructure, and open source ecosystems. This role is responsible for building differentiated, trustworthy, and scalable platforms that enable customers to manage, govern, and operationalize data for modern analytics and AI workloads across hybrid and multi cloud environments.

As a Director, you will manage and develop a team of product managers while partnering closely with engineering, open source program offices, research, go to market, and strategic partners. You will balance long term platform strategy with near term business impact, ensuring that investments in open source technologies and AI capabilities translate into customer value, ecosystem adoption, and revenue growth.

Key Responsibilities

Product Strategy & Vision

• Define and own the product strategy and multi year roadmap for AI enabled data platforms, with a strong emphasis on open source data infrastructure (e.g., distributed storage, data orchestration, streaming, search, and metadata systems).
• Identify and articulate how NetApp grade enterprise capabilities—security, governance, performance, reliability—differentiate open source based solutions in production AI and analytics environments.
• Align product strategy with company objectives, market trends, and customer transformation initiatives across data modernization and AI adoption.

AI & Platform Leadership

• Drive the integration of generative AI and agentic capabilities into data infrastructure products, enabling use cases such as intelligent data management, autonomous operations, and AI assisted user experiences.
• Partner with engineering and architecture leaders to shape platform capabilities including: 
• Data ingestion and pipelines for AI workloads
• Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures
• Model orchestration, evaluation, and observability
• Policy driven governance, data lineage, and compliance
• Ensure products are designed for operational excellence at enterprise scale, balancing innovation speed with robustness and trust.

Open Source & Ecosystem Engagement
Define NetApp’s open source data infrastructure product strategy, including decisions around build vs. partner vs. community collaboration.

• Work closely with open source communities, foundations, and partners to influence roadmaps while maintaining healthy upstream engagement.
• Establish clear product and business models around open source software, including subscriptions, managed services, and enterprise extensions.

Execution & Go to Market

• Lead end to end product execution across multiple teams, ensuring clarity on priorities, milestones, and measurable outcomes.
• Partner with sales, marketing, and alliances to define positioning, packaging, pricing, and launch strategies for AI and data platform offerings.
• Engage directly with strategic customers, field teams, and partners to validate direction, gather feedback, and accelerate adoption.

People Leadership & Product Excellence

• Build, manage, and mentor a high performing team of product managers across platform, AI, and open source domains.
• Set a high bar for product craftsmanship, including customer discovery, roadmap rigor, outcome based metrics, and clear product narratives.
• Foster a culture of collaboration, curiosity, and accountability within the product organization.

Job Requirements

• 12–18 years of experience in product management, with 5+ years in people leadership roles, preferably in enterprise software, cloud platforms, or data infrastructure. 
• Strong track record of delivering platform scale products used by developers, data engineers, and enterprise customers. 
• Hands on experience with AI enabled products, including familiarity with: 
• Generative AI and LLM based systems
• Agentic workflows and autonomous services
• AI evaluation, governance, and lifecycle management
• Deep understanding of open source data technologies and ecosystems, and experience commercializing or productizing open source software. 
• Proven ability to influence and align senior stakeholders across engineering, GTM, executives, and external partners. 
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear business and customer value.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, Computer Science, Data Science, or Information Systems.
• MBA or master’s degree strongly preferred.