Principal Product Manager
NetApp · San Jose, CA, US ·
- Work mode
- Hybrid
- Seniority
- Principal
- Category
- Product
- Experience
- 10+ years
Job Summary
NetApp is seeking a Principal Product Manager to lead the go-to-market strategy and execution for a new first-party cloud storage offering delivered through a leading public cloud platform.
This is a highly visible role at the intersection of product, engineering, sales, marketing, customer success, and cloud-partner teams. The successful candidate will help translate a differentiated cloud storage service into clear customer value, repeatable workload solutions, strong field readiness, and measurable business growth.
The role requires a product leader who can operate across strategy and execution: defining target markets and workload priorities, shaping positioning and packaging, enabling sellers and solution architects, engaging directly with strategic customers, and using field and market signals to influence the product roadmap.
Responsibilities
Go-to-Market Strategy
- Define and execute the go-to-market strategy for the new cloud storage offering, from launch through scaled adoption.
- Identify priority customer segments, workloads, use cases, and buying motions based on market opportunity, customer needs, and competitive differentiation.
- Develop a clear customer-value narrative that connects the offering’s technical capabilities to business outcomes.
- Translate product capabilities into repeatable workload solutions for databases, VMware, enterprise applications, engineering workloads, AI, analytics, and enterprise file services.
- Establish launch priorities, adoption milestones, success metrics, and mechanisms for tracking business performance.
Product and Business Leadership
- Act as the product lead for adoption, revenue growth, customer engagement, and market success.
- Partner with product management and engineering teams to ensure roadmap priorities reflect customer requirements, field feedback, and go-to-market needs.
- Develop business cases for new capabilities, regions, performance tiers, integrations, and workload investments.
- Use customer, competitive, and usage insights to identify opportunities to strengthen product-market fit.
- Help shape pricing, packaging, consumption models, and commercial programs in partnership with finance, sales, and cloud-platform stakeholders.
- Balance near-term launch requirements with the long-term strategy for the offering.
Cloud-Partner Engagement
- Build strong working relationships with product, engineering, sales, marketing, and solution architecture teams at the cloud provider.
- Develop joint plans for customer acquisition, workload migration, seller engagement, and pipeline development.
- Align cross-company stakeholders around shared priorities, launch milestones, field motions, and customer outcomes.
- Represent NetApp in joint planning sessions, executive reviews, customer meetings, and industry events.
- Identify opportunities to expand the offering’s relevance within the broader cloud-services portfolio.
Sales and Field Enablement
- Equip sellers, solution architects, partners, and customer-success teams with the messaging, tools, training, and competitive guidance required to position the offering effectively.
- Create repeatable sales plays for priority workloads and customer scenarios.
- Work directly with account teams to qualify opportunities, overcome adoption barriers, and advance strategic deals.
- Develop customer-facing materials, solution briefs, reference architectures, presentations, demonstrations, and executive narratives.
- Establish feedback mechanisms that connect field learning to product, roadmap, and go-to-market decisions.
- Support lighthouse customers, early adopters, and reference accounts through evaluation, deployment, and expansion.
Customer and Market Engagement
- Engage directly with enterprise customers to understand workload requirements, migration considerations, operational needs, and purchasing criteria.
- Serve as a trusted product expert in executive briefings, roadmap discussions, design-partner sessions, and industry forums.
- Develop a deep understanding of market trends across enterprise storage, cloud infrastructure, data services, AI, databases, and hybrid-cloud operations.
- Monitor competitive offerings and clearly articulate the service’s differentiation, strengths, and areas for continued investment.
- Build customer evidence through adoption stories, references, case studies, and measurable business outcomes.
Job Requirements
- 10+ years of experience in product management, product strategy, go-to-market, cloud infrastructure, enterprise software, or related roles.
- Demonstrated experience launching and scaling enterprise technology products or cloud services.
- Strong understanding of public-cloud platforms, cloud consumption models, enterprise infrastructure, and partner-led go-to-market motions.
- Experience working with sales, engineering, product marketing, solution architecture, finance, and customer-success organizations.
- Proven ability to translate complex technical capabilities into compelling customer value and repeatable sales motions.
- Experience engaging with enterprise customers, senior executives, sellers, and technical decision-makers.
- Strong analytical skills, with the ability to define business metrics, evaluate market opportunities, and make evidence-based prioritization decisions.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to influence across organizational boundaries.
- Ability to operate effectively in an ambiguous, fast-moving, pre-launch environment.
Success Messures
Success in this role will be measured through:
- Launch readiness and execution
- Customer adoption and consumed capacity
- Qualified pipeline and revenue growth
- Seller and solution-architect readiness
- Number and quality of repeatable workload solutions
- Strategic customer wins and reference accounts
- Joint field engagement with the cloud provider
- Customer satisfaction and expansion
- Influence on roadmap priorities based on market evidenc
Leadership Attributes
The ideal candidate:
- Thinks like a business owner and acts with urgency.
- Moves comfortably between product strategy, customer detail, and field execution.
- Creates clarity in complex cross-functional environments.
- Builds trust across company and partner boundaries.
- Uses data and customer evidence to drive decisions.
- Understands that launching a product is only the beginning; success comes from creating repeatable adoption at scale.
Education
- A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or Engineering.
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.