Technical Strategic Business Developer

Job Description

Software Engagement and Ecosystem

ROLE TYPE
Senior technical individual contributor

PRIMARY MANDATE
Own customer-value playbooks

SCOPE
Global / cross-functional

Position Overview

NI is creating a more repeatable approach for helping customers realize value from its software portfolio. Central to this approach is a set of customer-value playbooks that translate recurring customer challenges into structured, technically credible engagement methods.

The Senior Technical Engagement Lead owns the creation, validation, curation, and continuous improvement of these playbooks.

This is a senior, highly technical, customer-facing role. The person combines deep software and systems expertise with customer discovery, technical strategy, content development, and cross-functional leadership. The role works directly with selected customers to understand engineering workflows, validate proposed approaches, and convert successful engagements into reusable assets that other teams can apply across additional accounts.

The role does not own account strategy and does not replace Customer Success, Product Management, technical support, field engineering, Education Services, Sales, or partners. The role creates the technical system those organizations use to execute credible, outcome-oriented software engagements at scale.
Key Responsibilities
Own Customer-Value Playbooks

• Create and maintain a prioritized portfolio of reusable customer-value playbooks addressing recurring engineering and business challenges.
• Define the customer outcome hypothesis, applicability signals, discovery questions, current-state assessment, desired future state, and measurable success criteria for each playbook.
• Document the technical transformation path that connects NI software capabilities to customer outcomes.
• Define the demonstrations, reference architectures, examples, technical guidance, workshops, and supporting assets required to execute each playbook.
• Identify the expertise and delivery resources required at each stage, including Customer Success, Software Growth Managers, Product Management, TSC/TSE, FAE, Education Services, specialists, partners, consultants, and systems integrators.
• Establish clear entry, success, expansion, and stop criteria so the playbooks guide decisions rather than become generic sales content.

Validate Technical Understanding Through Direct Customer Engagement

• Participate selectively in strategic customer engagements where deep technical expertise is required.
• Lead or support technical discovery workshops with engineers, technical leaders, and account stakeholders.
• Examine customer development practices, deployed systems, data flows, operational constraints, adoption barriers, and software architecture.
• Test whether playbook assumptions, activities, and success measures are credible in actual customer environments.
• Support technically complex demonstrations, assessments, architecture discussions, pilots, and validation activities.
• Convert successful customer work into reusable methods without exposing confidential customer information.

Enable Cross-Functional Execution

• Prepare Customer Success teams to recognize when a playbook is relevant and connect it to account priorities.
• Help Customer Success adapt the reusable playbook to the customer's stakeholders, workflows, maturity, and desired outcomes.
• Enable Software Growth Managers to apply established playbooks in white-space accounts and high-growth software opportunities.
• Provide technical guidance to TSC/TSE, FAE, Education Services, specialists, and partners executing specific playbook activities.
• Develop facilitator guides, workshop materials, technical examples, training, and field-ready engagement assets.
• Help account teams determine which resources are required rather than assuming every organization participates in every engagement.
• Support strategic coordination of engagement narratives, agendas, experts, and technical contributors when multiple organizations are involved.

Connect Technical Work to Customer Value

• Ensure each playbook begins with a customer outcome rather than a product pitch.
• Translate technical improvements into measurable effects such as engineering capacity, development speed, product quality, operational efficiency, risk reduction, asset utilization, or avoided cost.
• Establish baselines and evidence requirements before recommending pilots or implementation work.
• Define how technical results should be documented and reviewed with customer stakeholders.
• Help teams distinguish product usage from demonstrated customer value.
• Build the technical and value evidence needed to support account expansion and renewal readiness.

Support Adoption and Account Expansion

• Design playbooks so a successful foothold can expand across additional teams, programs, sites, and workflows.
• Identify repeatable approaches for stakeholder mapping, champion development, pilot selection, validation, customer showcases, and cross-program visibility.
• Help account teams use validated evidence to build credibility beyond the original customer team.
• Define the technical conditions required to scale from a pilot into a sustained operating practice.
• Package successful implementations into customer references, reusable examples, standards, and expansion methods.
• Ensure recurring adoption and value reviews are built into the engagement model.

Maintain the Feedback Loop

• Capture recurring customer needs, technical barriers, adoption gaps, and evidence of successful approaches.
• Separate isolated requests from patterns that warrant broader investment.
• Translate field learning into actionable input for Product Management, R&D, Product Marketing, Customer Success, and technical delivery organizations.
• Recommend improvements to product capabilities, technical content, demonstrations, training, partner offerings, and future playbook versions.
• Maintain clear version ownership and governance for the playbook portfolio.
• Retire or revise playbooks that do not produce credible customer outcomes.

Cross-Functional Relationships
Customer Success

Owns account-specific strategy and execution oversight. The Senior Technical Engagement Lead owns reusable playbook content and technical methodology. The roles jointly contextualize the playbook for selected accounts, but this position does not assume responsibility for the account plan or Customer Success process.
Software Growth Managers

Provides playbook guidance and technical enablement for white-space and high-growth opportunities, while respecting the evolving scope of the Software Growth Manager role.
Product Management and R&D

Obtains roadmap direction and product expertise; returns recurring customer evidence, validated needs, and product gaps.
Product Marketing

Connects validated technical and customer evidence to positioning and broader-market narratives without reducing the playbook to marketing content.
TSC/TSE, FAE, Education Services, and Specialists

Defines where demonstrations, startup assistance, troubleshooting, consultation, proof-of-concept work, customized enablement, or specialist services are required. Preserves the distinction between FAE-led pre-sale proof of concept and TSC/TSE demonstrations, startup, consultation, troubleshooting, and post-sale activity.
Partners, Consultants, and Systems Integrators

Identifies activities external experts can deliver or operationalize at scale and defines the enablement and qualification required.
Sales and Renewal Teams

Provides technical and value evidence for commercial conversations. Sales and Renewals retain ownership of commercial strategy, pricing, negotiation, and contract execution.
Required Qualifications

• Deep expertise in LabVIEW, SystemLink, TestStand, DIAdem, VeriStand, or related NI software platforms.
• Experience with software development lifecycle practices, continuous integration and delivery, source-code management, automated validation, containerization, test-data management, or AI-assisted engineering workflows.
• Significant technical experience with software used in engineering, test, measurement, automation, or adjacent technical domains.
• Demonstrated ability to understand complex software architectures, development workflows, deployed systems, data pipelines, or engineering operations.
• Experience engaging directly with highly technical customers and leading discovery without defaulting immediately to product recommendations.
• Demonstrated ability to translate technical concepts into structured methods, guidance, demonstrations, and reusable assets.
• Ability to connect technical activities to measurable customer outcomes.
• Strong written, presentation, workshop facilitation, and technical storytelling skills.
• Ability to influence teams and coordinate work without formal reporting authority.
• Ability to identify patterns across customer engagements while distinguishing reusable insight from account-specific detail.
• Willingness to travel for selected customer, partner, and industry engagements.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working across Product Management, engineering, sales, customer-facing, support, and partner organizations.
• Experience architecting or supporting large, distributed test and measurement systems.
• Experience developing customer-facing technical programs, reference architectures, workshops, enablement materials, or adoption frameworks.
• Experience with enterprise environments involving multiple business units, sites, programs, or engineering disciplines.
• Experience translating customer feedback into product or roadmap recommendations.
• Experience enabling partners, consultants, systems integrators, or other external technical resources.

Measures of Success

Success is evaluated based on the quality, usability, adoption, and demonstrated impact of the playbooks, not simply the quantity of content produced.

• A prioritized portfolio of clearly defined customer-value playbooks.
• Playbooks used in active account or white-space motions.
• Account teams able to select and apply playbooks with less dependency on ad hoc expert intervention.
• Customer engagements that establish explicit baselines, success measures, and evidence.
• Validated examples converted into reusable technical assets.
• Expansion of successful approaches into additional customer teams, workflows, programs, or sites.
• Improved field readiness across Customer Success, Software Growth, technical teams, and partners.
• Recurring customer insights translated into specific product, content, training, or roadmap recommendations.
• Earlier visibility into adoption, value, stakeholders, and commercial implications before renewal.
• Clear evidence that ineffective playbooks are refined or retired.

Role Boundaries

• Owns creation, technical integrity, curation, validation, governance, and lifecycle management of customer-value playbooks.
• Contributes to selected customer discovery, technical validation, strategic engagements, enablement, and product feedback.
• Does not own individual account strategy, account execution oversight, Customer Success processes, commercial negotiations, routine technical support, or every customer implementation.
• Does not replace Customer Success, Software Growth Managers, Product Management, Product Marketing, TSC/TSE, FAE, Education Services, Sales, Renewals, partners, consultants, or systems integrators

The salary/pay range for this role is 101,000 - 188,100 commensurate with the skills, talent,

capabilities, and experience each candidate brings to the role.