Director, Product Mgmt (Open Source Experience) (San Francisco)

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.
• Highly Preferred: Previous experience productizing Kafka, Cassandra, OpenSearch or ClickHouse.
• 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.

Compensation:
The target salary range for this position is $228,000 - $340,000. 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, 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.

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.