Global Client Executive - Automotive

Job Summary

At NetApp, we believe data is the currency of innovation. Within our Strategic Sales Organization, we partner with the world’s most influential enterprises to unlock the value of their data and advance their most important business and technology priorities.

We are seeking a Global Client Executive (GCE) to lead one of NetApp’s most visible, complex, and strategically important Automotive relationships.

This role is designed for a senior business and sales leader who can operate at enterprise scale, build durable executive relationships, translate customer priorities into strategy, mobilize a global account team, and deliver sustainable customer and commercial outcomes.

This is not an opportunity-management role. It is a business leadership assignment. The GCE owns today’s commitments while building the relationships, strategic position, and growth architecture that create tomorrow’s opportunities.

Location: Remote, Detroit, Michigan preferred. 

Your Impact

As Global Client Executive, you will serve as the accountable business leader and general manager of the global customer relationship for a large, highly complex Automotive enterprise.

The GCE does not merely manage opportunities; the GCE runs the account as a business, synthesizing input from the core and extended account team to set strategy, align priorities, and drive execution toward the customer’s desired business outcomes.

You will own the integrated account outcome across strategy, commercial performance, customer relationships and outcomes, resource orchestration, governance, risk, and long-term trajectory. This reflects the GCE charter in the operating standard.

You will develop and execute a multi-year customer strategy, converting customer intelligence into strategic relationships, campaigns, qualified pipeline, and measurable value. Commercially, you will lead a Protect / Grow / Land strategy: protecting existing revenue and customer trust, expanding established relationships and footprints, and creating new business across whitespace, business units, geographies, workloads, and buying centers.

You will orchestrate Sales, Systems Engineering, Services, Support, specialists, partners, commercial resources, and executive sponsors around one account strategy and one customer narrative. Success requires equal parts strategist, operator, orchestrator, and growth leader.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the Account Strategy: Develop and execute a multi-year account strategy grounded in the customer’s business priorities, organizational landscape, competitive environment, whitespace, and desired business outcomes. Continually turn customer intelligence into action. 
• Lead Protect / Grow / Land: Protect existing revenue and customer trust, grow established relationships and footprints, and land new business across workloads, business units, geographies, and buying centers.
• Build Strategic Customer Relationships: Establish resilient, multi-level relationships across executives, economic buyers, champions, technical leaders, and other key decision-makers, creating executive engagement around customer value.
• Turn Discovery into Growth: Create a culture of customer discovery and translate customer priorities, challenges, and whitespace into strategic campaigns, business cases, qualified opportunities, and sustainable growth.
• Drive Opportunity and Forecast Discipline: Bring rigor to strategic pursuits through MEDDPICC, competitive strategy, stakeholder alignment, customer-validated advancement, and evidence-based forecasting.
• Orchestrate One Global Account Team: Align NetApp's cross-functional resources and ecosystem around one strategy, shared customer intelligence, clear roles, and accountability for execution.
• Drive Customer Value: Maintain accountability beyond the sale by governing commitments, delivery, escalation, adoption, and value realization, while establishing an operating cadence that drives decisions, accountability, and measurable outcomes.
• Lead with NetApp Values: Model ownership, customer centricity, inclusive leadership, intellectual honesty, resilience, and a growth mindset, particularly when operating under pressure or ambiguity.

What We're Looking For

This role is best suited for a senior strategic sales leader who has successfully operated in high-stakes, highly complex enterprise environments and understands how to run a global customer relationship as a business.

The ideal candidate will bring:

• 12+ years of demonstrated success leading large, complex enterprise customer relationships and strategic sales initiatives.
• Exceptional business acumen and the ability to connect customer business priorities with technology strategy and measurable outcomes.
• Strong Automotive industry knowledge and credibility in complex global enterprise environments.
• Executive presence and demonstrated ability to create strategic dialogue and influence senior customer and internal leaders.
• Experience developing multi-year account strategies and translating them into strategic campaigns, qualified pipeline, and commercial results.
• Demonstrated ability to protect and expand established customer relationships while simultaneously creating net-new business.
• Strong customer-discovery, relationship-development, MEDDPICC, opportunity qualification, and forecasting discipline.
• Experience orchestrating cross-functional teams without direct authority and establishing clear expectations, ownership, and accountability.
• Working knowledge of cloud, data infrastructure, enterprise technology platforms, and complex solution-selling environments, combined with the curiosity, resilience, and growth mindset required to navigate ambiguity.