Partner Solutions Architect (m/f/d) - Partner Sales Team

Job Summary
The Partner Solutions Architect (PSA) is a technical leader driving partner autonomy and market reach within the German Partner Sales organization. Acting as a trusted advisor for strategic resellers, distributors, and alliance partners, you will develop their technical capabilities and empower them to independently design and deliver NetApp-focused intelligent data infrastructures. Through mentoring, solution evangelism, and community leadership, you will accelerate pipeline generation and partner-led growth. You will collaborate closely with NetApp’s internal sales, systems engineering, solution architects, and alliance teams to ensure seamless ecosystem alignment.
Essential Functions
Thought Leadership & Evangelism: Represent NetApp's technical strategy at partner conferences, industry forums, and joint events to maximize brand visibility.
Technical Community Leadership: Build and lead technical partner communities to drive collaboration and mindshare among partner CTOs, practice leads, and architects.
Partner Technical Capability & Autonomy: Design and execute enablement strategies that empower partners to independently architect and sell modern data management and hybrid cloud solutions.
Technical Solution Advisory: Act as the primary technical advisor and escalation point, guiding partners in designing complex architectures and integrating storage solutions.
Pipeline Acceleration & Co-Selling: Support joint go-to-market initiatives, proof-of-concept (PoC) activities, and technical validations to accelerate pipeline velocity.
Cross-Functional Feedback Loop: Bridge the gap between the partner ecosystem and internal engineering, product, and sales teams to relay partner requirements.
Job Requirements
Proven experience in technical pre-sales, systems engineering, solutions architecture, or technical consulting, combined with a track record of driving success with partners, distributors, or system integrators.
Solid understanding of modern IT infrastructures, hybrid cloud models, virtualization, and key hyperscaler platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or Oracle Cloud).
Strong technical curiosity with the ability to grasp new trends like AI and modern data workloads, alongside a general familiarity with enterprise storage (NetApp experience is a plus, but not mandatory).
Strategic business acumen to easily translate complex technical architectures into tangible business value and customer outcomes.
Outstanding communication, presentation, and facilitation skills, enabling confident engagement with both technical staff and partner C-level executives.
A natural coaching and mentoring mindset with the ability to influence partner teams and drive mutual results through collaboration.
Fluency in both written and spoken German and English is required to support our local partner ecosystem and collaborate globally.
Willingness to travel within the region to build and maintain strong, face-to-face partner relationships.