Principal Engineer Industrial Engineering - Capital Capacity Planning jobs at Western Digital in United States, San Jose

Today’s exceptional challenges require your unique skills. It’s You & Western Digital. Together, we’re the next BIG thing in data.

This is a Hybrid role based in San Jose, CA.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Strategic Sourcing

• Develop, manage and execute strategies for the Capital Category
• Conduct RFQ and lead cross functional teams through the selection process of preferred suppliers with effective scoring criteria to critically evaluate supplier proposals in accordance within company policies
• Collaborate with technology/Equipment and tools Eng./Legal stakeholders to assess, understand, and prioritize business needs to optimize value with WD’s supply base
• Conduct spend/contract/proposal analysis for supply of capital equipment and tools to the leadership team
• Lead negotiations on commercial procurement agreements, including, but not limited to, Master Equipment/Tools and Service Agreements (MESA’s), Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), Statements of Work (SOW’s), Change Orders (CO’s) balancing business deliverables, legal interests and pricing
• Analyze total costs, assist business functions with ROI/TCO analysis, price and rate benchmarking and negotiate favorable business terms to leverage Western Digital purchasing power
• Research market intelligence to understand cost drivers and market trends

Category Management

• Develop, refine and implement category strategies and tactics that enable the procurement of semiconductor equipment/tools at the highest value benefit to the company
• Cultivate, enhance, and deepen cross functional stakeholder relationships at all levels serving as the subject matter expert on behalf of the procurement organization
• Actively monitor internal/external trends, synthesize and distill the business intelligence into actionable opportunities and pipeline projects that can and will be delivered Western Digital’s bottom line on an ongoing basis

Supplier Management

• Manage supplier relationships with a focus on supply/contract and cost management
• Lead supplier performance business reviews on a quarterly basis to enhance performance delivery from strategic partners
• Mediate supplier issues and resolve supplier contract disputes as needed
• Develop supplier rationalization entitlements for each category

Contract Management

• Evaluate processes and recommend improvements to standardize lifecycle contract and sourcing processes and systems
• Ensure pricing & deliverables as negotiated are included in the contract, coordinate comparison of proposals and final contract terms
• Act as liaison between Legal and the business

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree with 10yrs+ of experience in indirect capital equipment strategic sourcing with a semiconductor organization
• Engineering degree and MBA or JD preferred
• Supply chain certifications e.g. CSCP etc.
• Contract Negotiation / Vendor & Stakeholder Mgmt. / Influencing skills required
• Experience and expertise with sourcing & contracting ERP tools (SAP and/or Oracle), AI tools and Data analytics tools like PowerBI and Tableau is preferred

Core Competencies

• Ability to work well in a high-pace dynamic environment, handle multiple projects simultaneously, and ensure task completion and deadlines are met as required
• Demonstrated skills in negotiating and formulating technology contracts, understanding cost models and various price structures, management of contractual, IP and labor law risks
• Strong project management, organizational, and analytical skills required
• Excellent team facilitation and presentation skills
• Proficient with Microsoft Office applications: Excel, Word, PowerPoint

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 Western Digital’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 Western Digital’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 Western Digital 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.

Today’s exceptional challenges require your unique skills. Together, we can build the future of data storage.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Taking care of customer requests and answer product-related questions
• Updating trackers for qualification and sustaining issues
• Collaborate with customer on developing qualification plans for new products
• Manage and track qualification metrics and deliverables
• Lead periodical customer meeting to track customer qualification progress, issue and initiatives
• Hands-on 1st level failure analysis to debug customer issue
• Work hand-in-hand with Engineering and other cross-functional organizations to resolve issues and provide closure response to customer
• Assist with communicating customer requests for compliance with internal teams and coordinate customer deliverables such as feature request, required documents, etc.
• Represent and advocate customer needs and priorities to internal teams

REQUIRED

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or related engineering field with a graduation date before July 2026. The expected start date for this position is in July or August 2026.
• Interest in working in a customer-facing engineering setting
• Academic or professional experience in hardware/firmware failure analysis
• Past experience working with Hard Disk Drives a plus
• Proficiency in Python, SQL, C/C++
• Data science/ analytics skillset (preferably in Python, SAS, JMP)
• Proficiency with MS Office Suite

SKILLS

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to work in a cross-functional team setting.
• Good project management, problem-solving, analytical, and presentation skills.

Based on our experience, we anticipate that the application deadline will be

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 Western Digital’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 Western Digital’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 Western Digital 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.

Today’s exceptional challenges require your unique skills. Together, we can build the future of data storage.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

As a metrology engineer, you will be responsible for developing and implementing precise, robust, and high‐throughput solutions to control high volume manufacturing of complex, three dimensional thin film magnetic read/write head structures. Examples of projects include developing automated device inspection recipes to detect defects with machine learning and spectroscopic ellipsometer models to measure thin film thickness and index. To accomplish this objective, you will need to collaborate closely with process engineering teams that support wafer manufacturing operations.

• Work independently with minimal supervision in the Manufacturing Metrology group to
  • Develop, document, optimize, and sustain automated inspection recipes and process control solutions
  • Develop and refine technical methods/processes to identify root causes of operational issues, process inefficiencies, and measurement deviations.
  • Establish accurate baseline measurements and qualification of metrology solutions by collaborating with cross-functional teams across the fab
  • Deploy robust metrology system calibration and correlation strategies
  • Identify and resolve equipment issues, collaborating with equipment engineering teams and tool vendors to ensure optimal tool performance.
• Cross-train within Metrology Engineering to ensure seamless support coverage across teams.
• Partner with engineering and quality teams to analyze real-time metrology data, identify process deviations, and implement automated corrective strategies to improve yield and reduce cycle time.
• Summarize, document, and present results to technical and executive audiences to drive data-driven improvements.
• Communicate effectively with both management and shop floor.
• Display comfort and skill in presenting issues/findings.

Required:

• B.S. or M.S. in physics, chemistry, engineering (chemical, mechanical, electrical), material science
• Minimum of 0-3 years of work experience depending on education
• Programming/scripting experience in any of SQL, Python, Matlab, JSL, C#, etc. required
• Strong detail-oriented work habits.
• Ability to complete projects on schedule
• Practical understanding of electronics and mechatronics as applied to modern industrial measurement tools.

Preferred:

• Engineers are required to be hands on (equipment, wafers) so clean room and wafer fabrication / processing experience is preferred
• Practical knowledge of image processing (filtering, FFT, convolution, re-sampling, cropping, etc.) and computer vision (edge detection, object detection, feature matching, segmentation, thresholding, etc.) preferred
• Experience in machine learning (unsupervised, supervised, classification, neural networks, etc.) and optimizing defect capture rate by confusion matrix analysis strongly preferred.

Skills:

• Excellent skills in problem solving, data analysis, statistics, and both written and oral communications.

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 Western Digital’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 Western Digital’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 Western Digital 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.

Today’s exceptional challenges require your unique skills. Together, we can build the future of data storage.

We are seeking a self-driven and strategic leader to build and lead a high-performing, scalable, and future-ready Engineering Services and DevOps Center of Excellence, focused on improving development velocity, platform automation and cross-functional integration. This role requires a leader with a strong ownership mindset who can drive results-oriented initiatives in close partnership with engineering and IT leaders across business units. Key focus areas include CI/CD optimization, web tools lifecycle management, build and release automation, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and enterprise observability.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Engineering Services, DevOps & Modernization

• Own and optimize CI/CD workflows across multiple product lines for speed, reliability, and quality.
• Establish robust build and release automation, integrating test automation and security scanning.
• Oversee modernization and lifecycle management of engineering tools and platforms.
• Consolidate fragmented tools and services across teams to drive consistency, maintainability, and business agility.
• Ability to lead DevOps initiatives leveraging cloud-native and SaaS-based DevOps tools such as GitOps, GitHub Actions, and Azure DevOps across multi-cloud environments.
• Champion adoption of AI/ML and Agentic AI to enable predictive, proactive operations.
• Implement self-service developer platforms and self-healing systems.

Enterprise Observability & Insights

• Lead the strategy and implementation of enterprise observability platforms, integrating metrics, logs, traces, and events.
• Drive AIOps adoption for real-time anomaly detection, RCA automation, and improved service health insights.
• Drive the development and use of dashboards and data visualizations for real-time engineering and platform metrics.
• Enable actionable insights through data analytics to inform platform health, developer productivity, and operational decisions.

Leadership & Strategic Alignment

• Partner with engineering and IT leaders to align modernization goals and execution.
• Build and lead a high-performing team focused on automation, velocity, and excellence.
• Define key performance metrics and ensure compliance, security, and service sustainability.

REQUIRED

• Bachelor's/Master’s in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 14+ years in engineering services, DevOps, or platform leadership roles.
• Proven experience in platform modernization and DevOps at scale.
• Expertise in CI/CD, IaC (e.g., Terraform, Ansible), and automation in multi-cloud environments.
• Experience with observability and AIOps platforms
• Familiarity with internal developer platforms, AI-driven automation, and Agentic AI.

SKILLS

• Strong leadership, stakeholder engagement, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Knowledge of SRE, platform engineering, and Agile/SAFe practices.

Based on our experience, we anticipate that the application deadline will be

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 Western Digital’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 Western Digital’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 Western Digital 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.

Today’s exceptional challenges require your unique skills. Together, we can build the future of data storage.

You’ll be solving real problems, not theoretical ones, by turning massive amounts of machine-generated data into insights using Machine Learning, GenAI, LLMs, and more.

What you’ll do (and grow doing):

• Build and maintain custom internal software tools used to process, analyze, and visualize HDD development and production data.

• Develop ETL systems, web-based dashboards, ML models, and analytics pipelines that help product engineers innovate.

• Contribute to GenAI/LLM use cases—helping select and implement base models and embedding strategies for real-world deployment.

• Design prompt and token-based GenAI solutions that support classification, pattern recognition, and trend visualization.

• Work hands-on with modern frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow), tools (Python, C/C++, Node.js, Kafka), and databases (MongoDB, MySQL, Elasticsearch).

• Join in on architecture discussions, code reviews, and collaborative problem solving.

• Create internal guides and documentation that make your tools accessible to other engineers.

• Work on-site in a close-knit, fast-paced, highly collaborative team that values ownership, curiosity, and continuous learning.

• A recent MS or PhD grad in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Data Science, or a related field. (Dec 2024 - Dec 2025 Graduates only)

• Right to work in the US without requiring Western Digital to commence or sponsor an immigration case in order to employ you at any point in the future required.

• Experience with Python (Jupyter), C/C++, and at least one ML or AI framework (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow).

• Completed coursework or hands-on projects involving GenAI, LLMs, or machine learning.

• Comfort working with both relational and non-relational databases.

• Bonus if you’ve dabbled in: Kafka, Kubernetes, Jenkins, RESTful APIs, JavaScript, Node.js.

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 Western Digital’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 Western Digital’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 Western Digital 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.

Today’s exceptional challenges require your unique skills. Together, we can build the future of data storage.

You will have multiple opportunities to help improve FA processes and tools based on learnings from FA work. With your set of Electrical FA skills, you will be able to optimize FA processes and meet turn-around time of FA.
Over time, you will gain further expertise allowing you to be one of a few HDD EFA experts in the world!

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

This position requires full time onsite work in the electrical lab in our San Jose campus:

• Perform and manage Electrical FA tests in the lab and identify key findings and provide Electrical FA analysis conclusions for customer returned drives.
• Collaborate closely with other FA lab analysts.
• Summarize Electrical FA results based on key lab findings.
• Pro-actively engage with subject matter experts in PCBA, Firmware, FA Tools, Customer Technical Support and Customer Quality Managers, Factory FA and Quality teams on customer and qualification issues.
• Follow department/work group processes.
• Develop, improve, and document failure analysis procedures, processes, and requirements.
• Participate in selected customer issue resolution meetings.
• Effectively present information, ideas, and your perspective to peers, team members and managers.
• Create and meet schedules for high priority process improvements.
• Brainstorm, be open to inputs and recommend team improvements and team process improvements.
• Interact with Development teams to understand new technology, develop associated failure analysis tools, processes, and documentation.
• Define and work on tool improvements related to FA.
• Learn about product failures from development teams.

You will effectively communicate results and status with management and team members and participate in resolving product and customer issues by providing meaningful insights.

REQUIRED

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or related engineering field with a graduation date before August 2025.
• Right to work in the US without requiring Western Digital to commence or sponsor an immigration case to employ you at any point in the future required (for example, H-1B or other employment-based immigration case)
• Candidates who will not require relocation to the San Jose, CA will be preferred

SKILLS

• Electrical testing experience
• Electrical failure analysis experience with enterprise or client hard drives highly desired
• Detailed knowledge of Hard Drives and knowledge of factory processes
• Knowledge and experience with automation, Python, C is a plus
• Proven problem-solving skills
• Demonstrates patience, confidence, and composure
• Proven leadership skills
• Effective at multi-tasking, organization and time management
• Self-motivated
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Excellent interpersonal and teamworking skills
• Candidates must demonstrate relevant experience, interest and aptitude in both analytical and practical aspects of the above topics.

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 Western Digital’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 Western Digital’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 Western Digital 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.

Today’s exceptional challenges require your unique skills. Together, we can build the future of data storage.

Job Summary:

Reports To:Director, Strategy and Planning

Chief Strategy Officer (CSO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

Essential Duties & Responsibilities:

• Strategic Partnership & Cross-Functional Collaboration
  • Serve as a thought partner to teams across product, engineering, data science, marketing and sales, providing strategic operational planning and insights.
  • Collaborate with Finance & Operations (F&S) to provide critical context, scenario modeling inputs, and prioritization guidance for leadership investment decisions.
  • Act as a key liaison across teams, fostering alignment and ensuring effective execution of long-term business priorities.
• Operational Excellence & Data-Driven Strategy:
  • Collect, analyze, and synthesize data to inform strategic decisions and identify opportunities for growth and efficiency.
  • Design, implement, and refine processes and workflows to enhance team and organizational productivity.
  • Partner with functional groups to assess operational challenges and develop solutions aligned with company goals.
  • Define, implement, monitor, and report on key performance metrics to assess business health.
  • Serve as the subject matter expert (SME) and drive the strategy, design, AI/automation, and operationalization of cost-effective planning workflows.
  • Manage dependencies, risks, and workflow integration.
  • Design and implement a standardized system for managing changes to planning workflows.

Required:

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, business or related field
• Minimum of 7 years of experience with strong exposure to strategic planning, experience in top tier management consulting/investment bank/private equity followed by technology company
• Willingness to work in a fast-paced environment
• Strong judgment and decisiveness when dealing with timely, deadline-driven, content-related issues and concerns
• Insatiable curiosity to learn new domains, keep up with industry innovation, and constantly ask ‘why’
• Experience using data and metrics to determine and drive business process improvements
• Experience in driving change management across complex organizational structures

Preferred:

• MBA/MS from top tier institution preferred

Skills:

• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills
• Excellent leadership and communication abilities, strong financial skills
• Excellent written (memos and presentations) and verbal communication skills; timely communication

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 Western Digital’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 Western Digital’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 Western Digital 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.