Director, People Technology

Company Description

WD is building the infrastructure behind the AI-driven data economy.

As AI scales, so does data. Every interaction, every model, every system generates data that must be stored, managed, and made accessible over time. That’s where we come in.

We combine deep engineering expertise with global-scale manufacturing to deliver the storage systems that make AI possible, powering hyperscale data centers, cloud platforms, and enterprise infrastructure worldwide.

This isn’t theoretical work. It’s real systems, at real scale, people solving some of the hardest challenges in technology today.

We’re looking for people who want to build, solve, and operate at that level.

Join us and let’s shape the future of data.

Job Description

At Western Digital, we are transforming the way technology enables HR services and the employee experience. We are looking for a strategic and hands on Director, People Technology to lead a team of Business Systems Analysts responsible for delivering scalable, business focused technology solutions across People functions. This leader will mentor and grow a high performing business analysis team. This team is responsible for translating business needs into effective process and technology solutions across HR domains.  

The ideal candidate combines strong people leadership, deep business analysis expertise, systems thinking, and a passion for developing talent. This role sits at the forefront of delivering high-quality outcomes across the People Technology portfolio. 

About the Role 

Team Leadership  

This role leads, mentors, and develops a team of Business Systems Analysts by fostering accountability, continuous improvement, collaboration, and user centric problem solving. The Director establishes clear expectations, creates meaningful development plans, and opens career growth opportunities for team members while defining the capabilities and skills required for a strong business systems analysis function. Just as importantly, this leader builds a culture of knowledge sharing, constructive challenge, innovation, and impact. 

Technology Leadership 

The Director is responsible for driving our HR technology vision, roadmap, and execution. They provide direction and oversight across the full tech lifecycle, including requirements discovery, process analysis, functional design, testing, implementation, and post-launch optimization. This leader ensures consistent standards for documentation, quality controls, and delivery methods across the team, while coaching analysts to translate complex business challenges into clear, scalable, and sustainable process and technology solutions. The role also requires functional and technical depth to evaluate tradeoffs, challenge solution approaches, and engage credibly with business and technology partners. 

Stakeholder Partnership 

This leader serves as a trusted advisor to the People team, our IT technology partners, and company cross-functional stakeholders. The Director owns strong relationships across the organization to understand strategy, clarify priorities, and identify opportunities for transformation and optimization. They facilitate complex discussions, resolve ambiguity, align stakeholders, and drive decisions on requirements and solution direction, while creating transparency around priorities, dependencies, risks, tradeoffs, and expected business outcomes. This role will be tightly aligned with our IT organization, as delivery bridges across both groups.  

Improvement & Innovation 

This leader drives continuous improvement through process simplification, standardization, automation, and thoughtful technology enablement. They encourage the team to identify root causes, question legacy practices, and recommend solutions that improve employee experiences. They also champion responsible adoption of emerging capabilities and new ways of working to create measurable business value. 

Qualifications

Required Qualifications 

•  Proven experience leading and developing Business Systems Analysts/HRIS Analysts. Success building high performing teams, developing talent, and creating clear accountability for outcomes. 

•  Deep expertise in business analysis practices, including requirements management, process design, functional solution design, testing, implementation, and optimization. Establishing and improving operating models, user enablement, and governance frameworks. 

•  Strong understanding of enterprise HR technology, the HR domain, and its processes. The ability to connect company business priorities to HR programs and deliver meaningful, impactful outcomes.  

•   Demonstrated experience with Workday HCM & ServiceNow specifically, and broader HR tech SaaS solutions in general. Familiarity with operating in shared models where configuration and administration is co-owned between HR and IT. 

•   Expertise in modern SaaS HR systems architecture, integration principles, data quality practices, and emerging technologies such as AI. 

•   Significant experience and ability in designing and then delivering multi-year roadmaps, balancing quick wins with longer term transformative work.   

•  Exceptional communication, facilitation, influencing, stakeholder management, and problem solving skills. 

About you  

•  You are a people leader who builds high performing teams through clarity, coaching, accountability, and meaningful development. You empower decision making, develop enterprise talent, and create the conditions for others to do their best work. You’re known for growing future leaders. 

•  You are curious, pragmatic, and comfortable operating in ambiguity. You ask the right questions, simplify complexity, and turn broad business needs into clear priorities, scalable solutions, and impactful outcomes. 

•  You bring strong HR technology and business systems expertise, with the ability to connect processes, data, user experience, and technology decisions to distinct business outcomes. You can build a multi-year roadmap, balance backlog work with transformative change, and successfully deliver it. 

•  You lead with an enterprise mindset. You build trust across HR, IT, and business stakeholders. You align competing priorities, balance tradeoffs, and help teams debate, decide, and commit. You can align and co-deliver with your IT partners as one unified team.  

•  You are energized by continuous improvement and innovation. You challenge legacy ways of working with respect, identify opportunities to automate and simplify, and champion responsible adoption of emerging technologies, including AI. 

•  You care deeply about the employee experience and understand that great HR technology is more than just technical quality; it is intuitive, sensible, accessible, and built for durable scale. 

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, 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 [email protected] 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 11/07/2026 (3 months from posting), 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.

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 [email protected].