Engineering Director, Agentic AI Delivery

Company Description

At WD, 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, WD 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®, and WD_BLACK™.

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, WD 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

Role Overview

We are seeking a visionary Engineering Director to lead delivery of next-generation Agentic AI initiatives. You will oversee multiple autonomous AI agent systems that interact with complex enterprise workflows, external APIs, and real-time data. Your role is to translate cutting-edge AI research into reliable, scalable, and secure production systems, while providing strategic clarity to executive leadership.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Execution

• Define and execute the technical strategy for multi-agent AI systems.
• Own delivery roadmaps for high-priority agentic AI use cases.
• Communicate progress, risks, and metrics to the C-suite.
• Allocate engineering resources across competing projects.

Technical Delivery & Architecture

• Transition agentic prototypes to production with robust guardrails and fail-safes.
• Establish standards for reliability, observability, and scalability.
• Optimize AI infrastructure for cost, latency, and performance.
• Ensure compliance with data privacy and security standards.

Team & Culture

• Build and mentor high-performing teams of engineers and AI researchers.
• Collaborate with Product, Data Science, and Security teams to define capabilities and constraints.
• Foster a culture of innovation while maintaining production reliability.

Qualifications

Required:

Technical Expertise

• Hands-on experience designing and deploying autonomous AI agents.
• Deep knowledge of LLMs, GenAI, vector databases, embeddings, and prompt engineering.
• Strong background in distributed systems, microservices, and cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure).
• Experience with MLOps, observability, and AI security mitigation.

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Strong executive communication and stakeholder management.
• Proven crisis management experience with autonomous systems.
• Strategic thinking to align technical execution with business goals.

Preferred:

• 8+ years in software engineering with 4+ years in leadership.
• Experience launching enterprise or consumer AI products.
• Background in RLHF or domain-specific LLM fine-tuning.
• Familiarity with AI regulatory frameworks (e.g., EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF).

Success Metrics (KPIs)

• Timely delivery of agentic AI use cases.
• Reduced failure rates and hallucinations in production.
• Measurable business impact from deployed agents.
• High leadership satisfaction with transparency and predictability.

Why Join Us?

• Lead high-impact AI automation initiatives.
• Direct C-suite visibility and influence on AI strategy.
• Access to cutting-edge compute resources and a culture of experimentation.
• Opportunity to build a world-class team and set industry standards for agentic AI delivery.

Additional Information

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,