Strategy and Operations Manager, AI-Native Business Operations

NetApp, Inc. • San Jose, CA

8d • $147,900 - $220,000

About The Position

The Strategy and Operations Manager helps leaders in NetApp’s product organization make informed, timely decisions about people, resources, and spending. The role plans, forecasts, and tracks organizational resources and budget across headcount, open requisitions, software, cloud, and AI spend, and develops recommendations rather than simply reporting numbers.

This position combines strategic problem framing and senior-leader advising, rigorous analytical modeling, and hands-on development of AI-enabled systems that reduce recurring operational work. Its focus is delivering better decisions sooner using trusted numbers. The role is part of the AI-Native Business Operations team in the product organization and reports to the Director, AI-Native Business Operations. It partners closely with Finance, HR, Talent Acquisition, IT, data owners, and engineering leadership across the product organization.

The team emphasizes outcome-focused work, a connected and trusted source of truth, AI-assisted work validated by human judgment, and accountability for both the methods and data behind recommendations.

Requirements

• Typically, at least 8 years of related experience with a bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience.
• At least 3 years of consulting experience.
• Uses AI as the default approach to analysis, writing, and building, with examples, and builds validation into each step to maintain accuracy.
• Learns new domains, systems, and data quickly and can act when a brief or problem is not yet fully defined.
• Expertise in scenario and financial modeling, including headcount, cost, and what-if models, and the judgment to identify incorrect numbers.
• Hands-on technical data skills, including reading data architectures and table schemas, writing joins in SQL or Python, and preparing data by cleaning and deduplicating records and validating formats and keys.
• A track record of influencing directors and vice presidents without authority and making recommendations that were acted on.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to disagree productively and adjust recommendations as evidence evolves.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with Claude Code or Cursor.
• Experience with workforce or finance data in systems such as Workday or Snowflake.

Responsibilities

• Build plans and forecasts for the product organization's people and resources, and track them monthly, including engineering capacity and spend by product and investment theme and hiring, attrition, and backfills against plan.
• Manage product-organization spending against targets in partnership with Finance, covering headcount, open requisitions, software, cloud, and AI, and identify opportunities to consolidate, renegotiate, or stop spending.
• Advise product leadership by turning data into recommendations for vice presidents and their staff, and run planning cycles and leadership reviews.
• Operationalize strategic initiatives by defining scope, setting milestones and checkpoints, building and launching plans, measuring results, and keeping leadership updated.
• Build agents, automations, and dashboards with Claude and the team's other AI tools to reduce effort in recurring work.
• Maintain the connected data behind leadership views, including checks and an audit trail to support the accuracy and defensibility of figures.
• Partner with Finance, HR, Talent Acquisition, IT, and data owners on data access, definitions, and changes while following NetApp privacy and acceptable-use standards.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits package, which may include health insurance, life insurance, retirement or pension plans, paid time off, leave options, performance-based incentives, employee stock purchase plan, and restricted stock units; offerings vary by region and are subject to local laws, regulations, and company policies.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager