Title:  Senior Director, Professional Services Center of Excellence (CoE)

Job Summary

NetApp’s Professional & Managed Services business is transforming to deliver a more scalable, repeatable, and value‑driven services portfolio. We are seeking an experienced, visionary leader to build and run our global Center of Excellence (CoE). This leader will define the methodologies, offers, tools, and operational rigor that underpin our services business and will serve as the single point of accountability for driving consistency, quality, and profitability across all services motions.

This is a high‑impact builder role. The CoE today is early in its maturity, with limited dedicated resources and an evolving charter. The incoming leader will establish the vision, build the team, and create the frameworks and governance needed to elevate NetApp’s services business globally.

Key Responsibilities

Practice Stewardship & Market Insight

• Lead Voice of Customer (VOC), competitive benchmarking, and industry best practice programs.
• Develop and maintain scorecards that measure practice health, offer performance, and delivery quality.
• Represent NetApp’s services methodology externally with customers, partners, and industry forums. This includes NetApp’s On-Prem and Cloud products and services.
• Define and maintain the strategic architecture for how consulting, managed services, and cloud services interlock across the customer lifecycle (On-prem, Cloud, and Hybrid).

Offers & Methodology Leadership

• Build a unified, standard consulting methodology aligned to industry frameworks (e.g., WADI, PDIO).
• Ensure all offers follow a consistent structure: upfront discovery → defined deliverables → paid next steps.
• Partner with PS Portfolio team on productized offer creation, lifecycle management, and retirement.
• Define scope standards, templates, reusable IP, and quality governance.
• Partner with PS Portfolio team to establish a formal offer governance board and stage gate process for new offer incubation.

Delivery Excellence

• Define delivery standards, quality controls, and best practices across all service lines.
• Drive tooling, automation, and repeatability to improve delivery efficiency and margin.
• Partner with Delivery leaders to ensure field execution aligns to methodology and offer design.
• Aggregate and disseminate global best practices.
• Build a global knowledge management system with enforced contribution and consumption models.

Sales Enablement & Pre-Sales Alignment

• Develop consulting first sales motions, including discovery frameworks and value hypothesis tools.
• Create and maintain sales playbooks, qualification guides, and offer positioning materials.
• Provide deal SWAT support for strategic or first-of-kind opportunities.
• Train sales teams on methodology, offers, and value articulation.
• Succinctly articulate PS value prop to Sales teams based on on-prem, hybrid, and cloud offerings.
• Align with PS Portfolio team to define a repeatable “services attach” motion integrated with product sales cycles.

Portfolio Operations & Economics

• Partner with Finance to manage practice P&L, lead P&L optimization effort, investment planning, and portfolio economics.
• Define workforce skill requirements and competency models for consulting and delivery roles.
• Track and report KPIs, operational metrics, and offer performance dashboards for CoE owned offers.
• Provide SME input into operational tool design and enhancements.
• Create a global capacity and skills forecasting model to guide hiring and training investments.

Innovation & Strategic Programs

• Lead incubation and design of new programs, including cloud services and AI-enabled services.
• Contribute SME expertise to AI initiatives and automation strategies.
• Partner with Product and Engineering on cross-functional innovation.
• Establish a formal innovation pipeline for new service concepts, prototypes, and pilots.

Readiness, Enablement & Change Leadership

• Own readiness programs for technical knowledge, methodology adoption, and process execution.
• Drive enablement during transformation phases, ensuring global consistency.
• Build and maintain playbooks for new and existing activities.
• Create a global certification or accreditation program for consultants and architects to develop on-prem, Cloud, and hybrid competencies.

Leadership Expectations

• Build and lead a high-performing CoE team with a culture of accountability and excellence.
• Influence across matrixed organizations and drive alignment without direct authority.
• Operate as a strategic advisor to the VP & GM on services strategy and operational maturity.
• Simplify complexity and bring clarity to ambiguous environments.
• Champion a culture of consulting discipline across the entire services organization.

Qualifications

• 15+ years in professional services, consulting, or services product management; 5+ years leading a CoE, practice, or methodology function.
• Proven experience building consulting methodologies and productized service offers.
• Strong understanding of cloud, Hyperscaler PS delivery/engagement models, data management, and enterprise IT services.
• Demonstrated success driving cross-functional alignment in global organizations.
• Experience with P&L management, portfolio economics, and operational metrics.
• Exceptional communication, executive presence, and change leadership skills.
• Experience transforming underperforming or immature services organizations into scalable, repeatable, high-margin businesses.
• Proven ability to translate ambiguity into structured systems with well-defined success metrics.