Global Client Executive - Automotive

About the job

Own Every Moment at NetApp

At NetApp, your ideas power innovation. We lead in intelligent data infrastructure—delivering unified storage, integrated data services, and solutions that help organizations unlock the full potential of their data, from AI to multicloud.

Ready to innovate and contribute to our path to $10B? Here, you'll collaborate with passionate teams, tackle real-world challenges, and see your impact in how customers transform and grow. If you're ready to bring curiosity, creativity, and drive to every moment, NetApp is where your journey begins. Join teams that innovate to elevate, drive results, and excel together across every function.

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.

The target salary range for this position is USD. The salary offered will be determined by the candidate's location, qualifications, experience, and education and may be outside of this range. The range is based on 'On Target Earnings’ (OTE) representing the total potential earnings, which is the sum of the base salary and potential commission earned when performance targets are achieved. Final compensation packages are competitive and in line with industry standards, reflecting a variety of factors, and include a comprehensive benefits package. This may cover Health Insurance, Life Insurance, Retirement or Pension Plans, Paid Time Off (PTO), various Leave options, employee stock purchase plan, and/or restricted stocks (RSU’s). These offerings are subject to regional variations and governed by local laws, regulations, and company policies. We will provide detailed information about the specific benefits for your region during the recruitment process.

At NetApp, we embrace a hybrid working environment designed to strengthen connection, collaboration, and culture for all employees. This means that most roles will have some level of in-office and/or in-person expectations, which will be shared during the recruitment process.

Equal Opportunity Employer:

NetApp is firmly committed to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and to compliance with all federal, state and local laws that prohibit employment discrimination based on age, race, color, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, disability or genetic information, pregnancy, protected veteran status, and any other protected classification.

Why You'll Thrive at NetApp

At NetApp, you won't wait for the perfect moment—you'll make it. The early planning, the extra thought, the bold idea that turns good into great: That's how our people operate and how we continue to push the boundaries of data infrastructure.

NetApp is the trusted partner for organizations transforming data into opportunity. As the only enterprise-grade storage service natively embedded in Google Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft Azure, we empower customers to run everything from traditional workloads to enterprise AI with unmatched performance, resilience, and security.

Our culture

We celebrate mold breakers, bold thinkers, and problem solvers. We reward initiative, impact, and ownership. We provide flexibility so you can balance professional ambition with your personal life. Here, differences are not just welcomed—they drive everything we do.

If you're ready to innovate, rise to the challenge, and own every moment - make your next move your best one. Apply now.

Submitting an Application

To ensure a streamlined and fair hiring process for all candidates, our team only reviews applications submitted through our company website. This practice allows us to track, assess, and respond to applicants efficiently. Emailing our employees, recruiters, or Human Resources personnel directly will not influence your application.

AI Disclosure

For select roles, some stages of our hiring process may use artificial intelligence tools to help evaluate applications and candidate selection. These tools support—rather than replace—human decision-making.

Apply Save