David Schmitt

Client Strategy & Technology Officer

Apex, North Carolina, United States

About

I am an accomplished engineering leader with proven track record of driving innovation, leading and building high-performing teams, and delivering exceptional results. With over 20 years of experience in technology-driven industries, I have successfully led global engineering departments and executed strategic initiatives to propel organizations to new levels of success. My expertise lies in product development lifecycle management, requirements gathering and technical leadership. I excel in translating customer requirements into prioritized engineering actions, leveraging emerging technologies, and delivering innovative solutions that exceed customer expectations. I'm passionate about employee career development, supporting a diverse workforce and adapting to each employee's individual needs.

Experience

  • Client Strategy and Technology Officer at MinIO
    Dec 2025 - Present · 8 mos

    Enabling customers and partners to take advantage of a performant and differentiated S3 solution.

  • Client Strategy & Technology Officer - Object Solutions at Hitachi Vantara
    Oct 2023 - Dec 2025 · 2 yrs 3 mos

  • VAST Data (1 yr 7 mos)
    • VP Systems Engineering
      Apr 2023 - Aug 2023 · 5 mos

      Technical customer interface and instrumental in requirements gathering for key large customers including fortune 50 financial services companies and cloud providers. Also, responsible for driving SEC 17a4 compliance for VAST storage.

    • VP of US Engineering
      Feb 2022 - Mar 2023 · 1 yr 2 mos

      Engineering interface for key customers and resellers, gathering requirements, influencing the roadmap and enabling integration for HPE Greenlake. Also, focused on engineering recruitment, reviewing over 150 candidates, interviewing 80 software developers and QA candidates in an effort to build an R&D team in RTP for VAST.

  • NetApp (17 yrs 9 mos)
    • Snr. Engineering Director, NetApp StorageGRID
      May 2019 - Feb 2022 · 2 yrs 10 mos

      - Grew StorageGRID engineering team (software developers and QA) to ~100 engineers over 3 sites. - Instrumental in growing StorageGRID business 2-3x for multiple years - Key technical interface with large (forture 50) financial accounts, understanding complex technical software requirements while focusing and enabling the engineering team to deliver on those requirements, enabling sales in a majority of the largest financial institutions in the world.

    • Engineering Director, Object Storage
      Dec 2014 - Apr 2019 · 4 yrs 5 mos

      Led RTP StorageGRID engineering team to simplify the software defined, containerized deployment model and added SEC 17a-4, FINRA 4511, CFTC 1.31 compliance. https://www.netapp.com/media/9041-ar-cohasset-netapp-storagegrid-sec-assessment.pdf

    • Engineering Director, Virtualization
      Apr 2014 - Nov 2014 · 8 mos

      Engineering responsibilities focused on storage integration with VMware.

  • Snr Manager, GPI and Eng Manager at Ciena
    2002 - 2004 · 2 yrs