Director, Solutions Engineering

Job Summary

The ANZ SE Director is a strategic business, technical and transformation leader who partners with the ANZ VP, Geo SE Leader and fellow SE Directors to shape strategy and drive consistent execution. This role holder builds a future-ready SE organisation, advocates for ANZ’s customer, market and capability needs and balances local priorities with the success of the GEO and NetApp overall.

As a senior leader, the Area SE Director owns the execution and business outcomes along with the Area VP. As part of a multi-country Geo, the SE Director translates WW and GEO strategy locally, and brings Area reality back to the GEO.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and develop Solutions Engineering leaders and teams to deliver exceptional customer outcomes, strengthen solution architecture quality, and achieve business targets.
• Drive consistent opportunity stewardship and operational hygiene through SPARK, making Solutions Engineering contributions visible through technical wins, pipeline influence, competitive success, market expansion, and measurable business impact.
• Collaborate across Sales, Product Management, Engineering, Marketing, Professional Services, Customer Success, and Partner organisations to maximise customer success and solution adoption.
• Act as executive escalation point for complex pre-sales technical challenges and support strategic pursuits across Enterprise, Public Sector, and Commercial segments.
• Build a future-ready organisation through talent development, succession planning, leadership coaching, recruitment, retention, and proactive management of capability gaps.
• Foster a high-performance culture grounded in accountability, collaboration, inclusion, innovation, and continuous learning.
• Enable partners to position, architect, and deliver NetApp solutions effectively, orchestrating resources across the organisation for strategic customer engagements.
• Develop trusted advisor relationships with senior customer and partner executives and represent NetApp through industry events, analyst engagements, partner forums, and executive interactions.
• Translate consolidated field insights into clear recommendations for product, portfolio and investment decisions.
• Promote operational excellence by identifying systemic issues, sharing effective practices and improving scalability across Solutions Engineering.

Key Requirements

• 10+ years of progressive technical leadership experience within enterprise infrastructure, cloud, data management, storage, or adjacent technology markets, including responsibility for scaling pre-sales or Solutions Engineering teams within ANZ.
• Proven ability to build, develop, coach, and inspire high-performing leaders and teams, supported by effective succession and talent planning.
• Demonstrated success partnering with senior sales leaders to drive revenue growth, market expansion, and execution against business priorities.
• Experience leading complex organisational transformation and change initiatives while balancing near-term delivery with long-term capability building.
• Strong knowledge of cloud, hybrid cloud, data management, cybersecurity, AI, modern infrastructure technologies, and competitive market dynamics.
• Executive presence and the ability to influence senior leaders, customers, partners, and stakeholders through an independent, credible and commercially grounded technical perspective.
• Strong strategic thinking and business acumen, with the ability to connect technology investments and complex solutions to measurable business outcomes.
• Experience establishing and maintaining trusted CXO-level relationships within major customer and partner accounts.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts in business-relevant terms.
• Demonstrated ability to evangelise technology through customer engagements, executive forums, industry events, social media, analyst interactions, and partner communities across ANZ.