Platform Influence & Insights Lead

Job Summary
The Platform Influence & Insights Lead is a highly strategic role responsible for advancing the progression, market impact, and recognized leadership of the NetApp Platform while supporting other enterprise priorities as they emerge. The role connects NetApp's strategy with the analysts, customers, partners, influencers, communities, and strategic advisors who shape market understanding, adoption, competitive position, and business outcomes. It provides independent outside-in intelligence, validation, and strategic counsel while partnering with IPPM as the owner of product and portfolio positioning, messaging, and go-to-market strategy.
The leader in this role will accelerate the progression of the NetApp Platform by creating a connected influence and insights motion across customer, partner, analyst, influencer, and community audiences—and by converting the executive objective of reaching #1 in Gartner Magic Quadrants into a funded, measurable, cross-functional program. They will translate inside-out platform strategy, capabilities, proof points, differentiation, and execution into audience-relevant narratives, while ensuring external perspectives and Gartner evaluation criteria are captured and brought back into NetApp. By connecting messaging, engagement, insight collection, gap closure, and market evidence, this role will strengthen market understanding of the platform, improve the decisions that shape its roadmap and go-to-market strategy, and earn recognition that reflects NetApp’s market value.
This leader will work across product, IPPM, sales, marketing, corporate strategy, customer success, executive leadership, Analyst Relations, and the broader Influence & Insights organization. They will orchestrate how NetApp communicates the platform from the inside out, equipping audience leaders with aligned narratives and evidence while tailoring engagement to each audience. They will establish an integrated influence orchestration model that aligns external stakeholder engagement, evidence, market insight, strategic evaluations, gap closure, ownership, and measurable action across the NetApp Platform and other priority initiatives.
Together, these motions will build understanding, credibility, advocacy, actionable intelligence, and accountable enterprise action that advance the NetApp Platform and other strategic priorities.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Influence Orchestration
Own the cross-audience influence strategy for the NetApp Platform across customers, partners, analysts, influencers, and communities.
Translate platform strategy, architecture, capabilities, differentiation, and customer value into clear, credible, and audience-relevant narratives.
Orchestrate consistent inside-out platform messaging across audience programs while tailoring engagement to each audience’s priorities, knowledge, and role in the market.
Build and activate integrated platform proof points, customer and partner evidence, analyst validation, and community advocacy.
Develop platform engagement plans, executive briefings, audience toolkits, talking points, and presentations that enable coordinated influence.
Partner with audience leaders to identify priority stakeholders, moments, and channels that can advance platform understanding and adoption.
Drive alignment across product, product marketing, sales, marketing, and executive stakeholders on platform positioning and evidence.
Represent Influence & Insights with executive presence in leadership reviews and external engagements where technical credibility and narrative quality matter.
Strategic Insights Orchestration
Leverage the integrated listening model to collect platform insights across customer, partner, analyst, influencer, and community audiences in an optimal way.
Build trusted relationships with senior external stakeholders to uncover platform perceptions, expectations, adoption barriers, proof points, risks, and opportunities.
Combine qualitative and quantitative inputs from interviews, advisory programs, research, surveys, digital engagement, and community signals into a cohesive view of platform progress.
Identify patterns and differences across audiences, connecting external signals to implications for platform strategy, roadmap, positioning, go-to-market execution, and adoption.
Translate complex findings into clear executive narratives, recommendations, decision frameworks, and actions.
Leverage the defined closed-loop mechanism that routes insights to the appropriate platform, product, sales, and marketing owners and tracks resulting actions.
Define measures of progress for audience understanding, credibility, advocacy, insight quality, and business impact.
Required Qualifications
Strong understanding of enterprise technology markets, platform business models, and the market dynamics shaping data infrastructure, cloud, and AI.
Substantive NetApp portfolio knowledge, technology depth, and engineering fluency sufficient to engage credibly with technical buyers, product leaders, engineering teams, partners, and analysts.
15+ years of progressive experience spanning influence, insights, strategy, product marketing, analyst relations, customer or partner engagement, consulting, or a related field.
Demonstrated experience leading or materially influencing Gartner Magic Quadrant strategy, including evaluation readiness, gap analysis, evidence development, executive alignment, and measurable improvement in market position.
Ability to translate analyst evaluation criteria and market expectations into funded cross-functional plans that address product, business model, execution, and perception gaps.
Proven ability to build a credible market leadership case through differentiated strategy, demonstrated execution, competitive evidence, and customer and partner outcomes.
Demonstrated ability to build and orchestrate integrated programs across customer, partner, analyst, and community audiences.
Strong analytical judgment and experience synthesizing formal research, stakeholder feedback, engagement data, competitive intelligence, analyst input, and market signals into actionable recommendations.
Exceptional storytelling and communication skills, with the ability to translate complex platform concepts into clear, differentiated narratives for technical, business, executive, and analyst audiences.
Demonstrated success in senior-level external engagement and relationship building across multiple stakeholder groups.