Partner Solutions Architect (m/f/d) - Partner Sales Team

Job Summary

The Partner Solutions Architect (PSA) is a technical leader driving partner autonomy and market reach within the German Partner Sales organization. Acting as a trusted advisor for strategic resellers, distributors, and alliance partners, you will develop their technical capabilities and empower them to independently design and deliver NetApp-focused intelligent data infrastructures. Through mentoring, solution evangelism, and community leadership, you will accelerate pipeline generation and partner-led growth. You will collaborate closely with NetApp’s internal sales, systems engineering, solution architects, and alliance teams to ensure seamless ecosystem alignment.

Essential Functions

• Thought Leadership & Evangelism: Represent NetApp's technical strategy at partner conferences, industry forums, and joint events to maximize brand visibility.
• Technical Community Leadership: Build and lead technical partner communities to drive collaboration and mindshare among partner CTOs, practice leads, and architects.
• Partner Technical Capability & Autonomy: Design and execute enablement strategies that empower partners to independently architect and sell modern data management and hybrid cloud solutions.
• Technical Solution Advisory: Act as the primary technical advisor and escalation point, guiding partners in designing complex architectures and integrating storage solutions.
• Pipeline Acceleration & Co-Selling: Support joint go-to-market initiatives, proof-of-concept (PoC) activities, and technical validations to accelerate pipeline velocity.
• Cross-Functional Feedback Loop: Bridge the gap between the partner ecosystem and internal engineering, product, and sales teams to relay partner requirements.

Job Requirements

• Proven experience in technical pre-sales, systems engineering, solutions architecture, or technical consulting, combined with a track record of driving success with partners, distributors, or system integrators.
• Solid understanding of modern IT infrastructures, hybrid cloud models, virtualization, and key hyperscaler platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or Oracle Cloud).
• Strong technical curiosity with the ability to grasp new trends like AI and modern data workloads, alongside a general familiarity with enterprise storage (NetApp experience is a plus, but not mandatory).
• Strategic business acumen to easily translate complex technical architectures into tangible business value and customer outcomes.
• Outstanding communication, presentation, and facilitation skills, enabling confident engagement with both technical staff and partner C-level executives.
• A natural coaching and mentoring mindset with the ability to influence partner teams and drive mutual results through collaboration.
• Fluency in both written and spoken German and English is required to support our local partner ecosystem and collaborate globally.
• Willingness to travel within the region to build and maintain strong, face-to-face partner relationships.