Senior Director, HDD Technology Roadmap

Company Description

At Western Digital, our vision is to power global innovation and push the boundaries of technology to make what you thought was once impossible, possible.

At our core, Western Digital is a company of problem solvers. People achieve extraordinary things given the right technology. For decades, we’ve been doing just that—our technology helped people put a man on the moon and capture the first-ever picture of a black hole.

We offer an expansive portfolio of technologies, HDDs, and platforms for business, creative professionals, and consumers alike under our Western Digital®, WD®, WD_BLACK™, and SanDisk® Professional brands.

We are a key partner to some of the largest and highest-growth organizations in the world. From enabling systems to make cities safer and more connected, to powering the data centers behind many of the world’s biggest companies and hyperscale cloud providers, to meeting the massive and ever-growing data storage needs of the AI era, Western Digital is fueling a brighter, smarter future.

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

Job Description

Essential Duties & Responsibilities:

• Own the HDD technology roadmap end-to-end, ensuring clarity, alignment, and timely updates across engineering, product, and operations organizations.

• Facilitate cross-functional collaboration, gathering inputs from R&D, platform, SoC, firmware, manufacturing, and customer-facing teams to create a unified, executable roadmap.

• Lead executive-level reviews every two months, presenting roadmap status, highlighting tradeoffs, and driving alignment on strategic priorities.

• Develop and maintain a transparent dashboard to provide real-time visibility into roadmap progress, milestones, dependencies, and risks.

• Identify and escalate conflicts, blockers, and resource gaps, working with senior leaders to resolve issues and adjust priorities as needed.

• Act as the single point of accountability for roadmap communication, ensuring stakeholders at all levels—from engineers to executives—have consistent, accurate information.

• Drive continuous improvement in roadmap processes, including mechanisms for early risk detection, cross-team accountability, and streamlined updates.

• Partner with customers and business teams (as needed) to ensure the roadmap reflects evolving industry demands and cloud/data center requirements.

Qualifications

Required:

• Proven experience at the Senior Director level (or equivalent) leading complex, cross-functional technology programs or roadmaps.

• Deep technical understanding of hard disk drive (HDD) architecture, development, and manufacturing, or closely related storage technologies.

• Demonstrated ability to work across multiple organizations (engineering, operations, product, business) to align strategy and execution.

• Strong executive presence and communication skills, with experience preparing and delivering updates to executive leadership.

• Proven track record of identifying risks, resolving conflicts, and driving accountability at scale.

Preferred:

• Familiarity with dashboarding and reporting tools (e.g., Power BI, Tableau, or equivalent) to support roadmap visibility.

• Experience working with cloud service providers or hyperscale customers, understanding their requirements for HDD technology.

• Background in technology strategy, portfolio management, or product planning.

• Ability to influence without direct authority in a global, matrixed organization.

• Degree in engineering, computer science, or a related technical field.

Skills:

• Exceptional organizational, analytical, and problem-solving skills.

Additional Information

Western Digital 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 condit