Sr. Director, Intelligent Platforms

We are seeking a Principal Architect, Intelligent Platforms to help shape the technical architecture for a next generation platform strategy that unlocks the full value of intelligent storage infrastructure. This leader will support the development of a platform architecture that begins with HDD, extends to flash, and evolves across future storage tiers through a consistent, scalable, and developer friendly API foundation.

The ideal candidate brings deep systems architecture expertise across storage, distributed systems, software platforms, and APIs. This person will work across product, engineering, research, and business teams to help translate strategic goals into a durable technical architecture, clear design principles, and an executable roadmap.

This is a high impact role for a senior technical leader who can think strategically, go deep technically, and align diverse stakeholders around a bold platform vision.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

1. Support the definition and evolution of the architecture for Intelligent Platforms across device, software, and network interface layers.
2. Partner with product management, engineering, and fellow architects to shape a scalable API and platform architecture that emphasizes consistency, extensibility, and long term value.
3. Provide architectural guidance and technical leadership on key design decisions, tradeoffs, and integration points across HDD, flash, and future storage tiers.
4. Contribute to architectural reviews, technical standards, and design principles that help ensure coherence across teams and releases.
5. Represent the architecture in cross functional discussions with internal stakeholders, partners, and customers, helping connect strategic goals with technical direction.

Required:

1. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field.
2. 10+ years of experience in systems architecture, platform software, storage systems, distributed systems, or related infrastructure domains.
3. Proven experience contributing to the architecture of large scale platforms, infrastructure software, or storage products.
4. Strong background in APIs, software architecture, and system level design for complex products.
5. Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence across engineering, product, and leadership teams.

Preferred:

1. Advanced degree in a relevant technical field.
2. Experience with storage technologies such as HDD, SSD, object storage, block storage, file storage, or distributed storage.
3. Familiarity with hyperscale infrastructure patterns, internal platform APIs, or cloud scale services.
4. Experience supporting architectural decisions across both hardware and software domains.
5. Familiarity with AI and data intensive workloads and the infrastructure needs that support them.

WD is committed to providing equal opportunities to all applicants and employees and will not discriminate against any applicant or employee based on their race, color, ancestry, religion (including religious dress and grooming standards), sex (including pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, breastfeeding or related medical conditions), gender (including a person’s gender identity, gender expression, and gender-related appearance and behavior, whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth), age, national origin, sexual orientation, medical condition, marital status (including domestic partnership status), physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, protected medical and family care leave, Civil Air Patrol status, military and veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics. We also prohibit harassment of any individual on any of the characteristics listed above. Our non-discrimination policy applies to all aspects of employment. We comply with the laws and regulations set forth in the "Know Your Rights: Workplace Discrimination is Illegal” poster. Our pay transparency policy is available here.

WD thrives on the power and potential of diversity. As a global company, we believe the most effective way to embrace the diversity of our customers and communities is to mirror it from within. We believe the fusion of various perspectives results in the best outcomes for our employees, our company, our customers, and the world around us. We are committed to an inclusive environment where every individual can thrive through a sense of belonging, respect and contribution.

WD is committed to offering opportunities to applicants with disabilities and ensuring all candidates can successfully navigate our careers website and our hiring process. Please contact us at jobs.accommodations@wdc.com to advise us of your accommodation request. In your email, please include a description of the specific accommodation you are requesting as well as the job title and requisition number of the position for which you are applying.

Based on our experience, we anticipate that the application deadline will be 7/27/26, although we reserve the right to close the application process sooner if we hire an applicant for this position before the application deadline. If we are not able to hire someone from this role before the application deadline, we will update this posting with a new anticipated application deadline.

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Compensation & Benefits Details

• An employee’s pay position within the salary range may be based on several factors including but not limited to (1) relevant education; qualifications; certifications; and experience; (2) skills, ability, knowledge of the job; (3) performance, contribution and results; (4) geographic location; (5) shift; (6) internal and external equity; and (7) business and organizational needs.
• The salary range is what we believe to be the range of possible compensation for this role at the time of this posting.  We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range and this range is only applicable for jobs to be performed in California, Colorado, New York or remote jobs that can be performed in California, Colorado and New York.  This range may be modified in the future.
• If your position is non-exempt, you are eligible for overtime pay pursuant to company policy and applicable laws.  You may also be eligible for shift differential pay, depending on the shift to which you are assigned.

• You will be eligible to be considered for bonuses under either WD’s Short Term Incentive Plan (“STI Plan”) or the Sales Incentive Plan (“SIP”) which provides incentive awards based on Company and individual performance, depending on your role and your performance. You may be eligible to participate in our annual Long-Term Incentive (LTI) program, which consists of restricted stock units (RSUs) or cash equivalents, pursuant to the terms of the LTI plan. Please note that not all roles are eligible to participate in the LTI program, and not all roles are eligible for equity under the LTI plan. RSU awards are also available to eligible new hires, subject to WD's Standard Terms and Conditions for Restricted Stock Unit Awards.

• We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid vacation time; paid sick leave; medical/dental/vision insurance; life, accident and disability insurance; tax-advantaged flexible spending and health savings accounts; employee assistance program; other voluntary benefit programs such as supplemental life and AD&D, legal plan, pet insurance, critical illness, accident and hospital indemnity; tuition reimbursement; transit; the Applause Program; employee stock purchase plan; and the WD Savings 401(k) Plan.
• Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole discretion, consistent with the law.

Notice To Candidates: Please be aware that WD and its subsidiaries will never request payment as a condition for applying for a position or receiving an offer of employment. Should you encounter any such requests, please report it immediately to WD Ethics Helpline or email compliance@wdc.com.