Sr Director, Legal
Job Summary
NetApp is seeking a Senior Director, Legal to serve as the legal business partner to the Partner/Ecosystem and Marketing organizations within Sales. This leader will advise executives, translate business strategy into scalable legal frameworks, and oversee complex commercial matters, indirect go-to-market models, strategic partnerships, and global marketing activities.
The role requires an accomplished people leader with deep experience drafting and negotiating sophisticated commercial agreements and strong executive presence.
The Senior Director will set legal strategy and priorities across commercial transactions, alliances, partner ecosystems, OEM relationships, and global marketing, while guiding cross-functional execution.
This is an opportunity to shape how Legal enables partner-led growth and global marketing, build a high-performing team, and improve execution across functions and geographies.
Reporting to the Vice President, Field Legal, this role leads two U.S.-based attorneys and drives outcomes through a global network of Legal and cross-functional partners.
This is a U.S.-based hybrid role located in RTP, Vienna (VA), or San Jose (CA) and may require occasional travel.
What You'll Do
Key Responsibilities
- Advise Partner/Ecosystem and Marketing executives with practical, business-focused legal counsel.
- Set priorities and coordinate legal support across commercial transactions, alliances, distributors, resellers, OEM relationships, channel models, partner initiatives, and global marketing.
- Oversee business-critical agreements and draft, review, and negotiate the most complex or strategic matters.
- Advise on indirect go-to-market structures and complex B2B relationships that enable partner-led growth.
- Support global marketing campaigns, promotions, brand and communications matters, events, sponsorships, and digital marketing.
- Enable revenue, accelerate deals, and deliver practical, risk-balanced solutions.
- Lead, develop, and mentor a high-performing, collaborative legal team.
- Design scalable templates, playbooks, processes, governance frameworks, and enablement resources that improve consistency and speed.
What You'll Bring
- J.D. and active membership in good standing with at least one U.S. state bar.
- 15+ years of legal experience, including substantial in-house experience in technology or a comparably complex global business.
- Proven legal leadership with accountability for team performance, talent, priorities, and delivery.
- 5+ years managing and developing attorneys or legal professionals.
- Deep experience with partner ecosystems, alliances, distribution, resellers, OEMs, channel programs, and indirect go-to-market models.
- Experience advising marketing or related customer-facing organizations on global campaigns, promotions, brand, communications, sponsorships, and digital marketing.
- Strong commercial judgment in fast-paced, sales-facing environments.
- Strong drafting and negotiation experience across complex commercial, partner, channel, alliance, OEM, distribution, and marketing agreements.
- Experience building legal templates, playbooks, governance models, and standardized processes.
- Executive presence and the ability to influence senior leaders, communicate clearly, navigate disagreement, and build credibility quickly.
- Ability to succeed in a large, matrixed, global organization; public-company experience preferred.
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.
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Why NetApp?
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.
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Learn moreNetApp 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. We pledge to take every reasonable step to ensure that our applicants and employees are respected, treated fairly, and with dignity. See the EEO poster. NetApp makes reasonable accommodations, consistent with applicable laws, for religious purposes and for the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified applicant or employee with a disability, who can perform the essential job functions unless undue hardship would result.
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If you are an applicant with a physical or mental disability that requires reasonable accommodation for any part of our application process, please email accessibility@netapp.com. Each request for reasonable accommodation will be considered on a case-by-case basis, consistent with applicable laws and regulations. Please note, this email address is only for accommodation requests; we do not accept unsolicited resumes.
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We’re sorry, but we cannot accept unsolicited resumes that are sent to NetApp employees or contractors. We will not compensate for a referral without a current contract on file with our Talent Acquisition team. If you’re interested in helping us with a particular role, please call your partner in Talent Acquisition to discuss.