Western Digital Technologies

Principal Full Stack Developer & Solutions Architect - AI, Data & Cloud

Western Digital Technologies • $150K — $180K *
San Jose, CA 95123In-Person
Enterprise Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Today
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Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, or related field; advanced degree preferred.
  • 8+ years in software engineering, with ownership of designed systems.
  • Experience in solution architecture across multiple domains.
  • Strong proficiency in Python and SQL; familiarity with modern front-end technologies (React/TypeScript) or quick UI frameworks.
  • Experience with LLM applications and orchestration frameworks.
  • Hands-on experience in data engineering and analytics with tools like Airflow or dbt.
  • Solid AWS skills, especially in containerized applications and infrastructure-as-code.

Responsibilities

  • Own the complete solution architecture for AI/ML, data analytics, and cloud applications.
  • Establish design patterns and standardized technologies while making build-vs-buy decisions.
  • Architect agent systems for engineering workflows, ensuring validation processes are in place.
  • Design the data retrieval layer for analytics solutions, ensuring data quality and reliability.
  • Architect cloud solutions emphasizing performance and cost efficiency using AWS.
  • Develop end-to-end applications, focusing on user experience and seamless integration with existing tools.
  • Engage directly with product engineers to co-develop solutions and run skill-transfer sessions.

Benefits

  • Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance.
  • Paid vacation time and sick leave.
  • Life, accident, and disability insurance coverage.
  • Tuition reimbursement and flexible health spending accounts.
  • Employee stock purchase plan and 401(k) retirement plan.
Full Job Description
Job Description

Western Digital is seeking a Principal Full Stack Developer and Solutions Architect to design and build the AI, data analytics, and cloud solutions used by our Product Development engineering organization. This is a hands-on principal role: you will own the solution architecture, write the code, and design the interfaces engineers actually work in.

You will sit with product engineering teams, identify where AI, data, and cloud capability create real leverage, and take those use cases from prototype to production. Your scope spans the full solution - agentic and AI/ML services, the data and analytics layer beneath them, and the cloud platform they run on. You will set the design patterns, evaluation standards, and quality gates that the wider team builds against, and act as the senior technical counterpart to the AI Center of Excellence, Enterprise Data, and Engineering Cloud organizations. Success in this role is measured by engineering productivity gained, not only by systems deployed.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Solution Architecture & Technical Leadership
  • Own end-to-end solution architecture for Product Development use cases spanning AI/ML, data analytics, and cloud - from data source through to the engineer's interface.
  • Establish reference architectures, design patterns, and technology standards, and select the tools the organization will standardize on.
  • Make build-vs-buy decisions and defend them to IT and business leadership.
  • Ensure solutions align with enterprise security and data governance requirements by design.
  • Provide design review and technical mentorship to the AI/Data Engineer and Platform/DevOps Engineer on the team.
  • Ability and proven track record managing software developers

AI & Agentic Systems
  • Design agent systems for engineering workflows: tool use, orchestration, multi-agent boundaries, and human-in-the-loop controls.
  • Define evaluation methodology and quality gates - golden sets, regression suites, LLM-as-judge - so that no solution reaches an engineer's desk unvalidated.
  • Set model routing and guardrail policy through the enterprise LLM gateway.
  • Determine where AI is the right answer and where a deterministic pipeline, analytics solution, or existing automation is the better engineering decision.

Data & Analytics
  • Architect the data and retrieval layer that AI and analytics solutions depend on: ingestion, modeling, semantic layers, and access patterns across engineering and test data.
  • Select and integrate data analytics and BI tooling, and enable self-service analytics for engineering teams rather than one-off reporting.
  • Design pipelines and data products that land on Enterprise Data foundations rather than duplicating them.
  • Ensure data quality, lineage, and permission propagation so that downstream AI and analytics outputs are trustworthy.

Cloud & Platform
  • Architect solutions for AWS and containerized runtimes, balancing performance, reliability, and cost.
  • Define deployment, infrastructure-as-code, and CI/CD patterns in partnership with the Platform/DevOps Engineer.
  • Engineer for latency, inference cost, and cloud spend as first-class design constraints.
  • Build on Engineering Cloud and AI CoE platform foundations rather than constructing parallel stacks.

Full Stack Development & User Experience
  • Build applications end-to-end: backend services, orchestration logic, APIs, data access, and the user-facing surface.
  • Own the user experience - how work is initiated, how progress is made visible, and how output is reviewed and corrected by the engineer.
  • Decide embedded-versus-standalone delivery across Slack, Teams, IDE, BI, and web surfaces, and ship working pilot interfaces without waiting on a front-end team.
  • Define the interaction patterns that ITES-US Engineering & Web Apps productionizes for scaled deployment.

Delivery & Enablement
  • Partner directly with Product Development engineers to identify, scope, and co-develop solutions; work on-site alongside engineering teams on a regular cadence.
  • Translate Product Development leadership priorities into a sequenced solution roadmap with measurable outcomes.
  • Run skill-transfer sessions so that PD engineers can extend and maintain what is built.


Qualifications
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics or a related field; advanced degree a plus.
  • 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including production ownership of systems you designed.
  • Demonstrated solution architecture experience spanning more than one domain - application, data, cloud, or AI - with the ability to own a design end-to-end.
  • Strong Python and SQL; proficiency in a modern front-end stack (React/TypeScript) or rapid UI frameworks (Streamlit, Gradio) sufficient to ship a usable internal tool independently.
  • Demonstrated experience building LLM-based applications with orchestration frameworks (LangGraph, Langflow, or equivalent), including tool/function calling and MCP-based integrations, and practical experience with RAG architectures.
  • Hands-on experience with data engineering and analytics tooling - pipeline orchestration (Airflow, dbt, or equivalent), warehouse or lakehouse platforms, and BI or visualization tools.
  • Solid AWS experience, including containerized workloads (Kubernetes/EKS), infrastructure-as-code, and cost-aware architecture.
  • Working knowledge of evaluation methodology for non-deterministic systems, with a track record of measuring quality rather than asserting it.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication; able to present technical direction to director and VP audiences.
  • Ability to work on-site in San Jose, CA, with regular embedded time alongside engineering teams.

Preferred Qualifications
  • Prior delivery of an AI or analytics solution in production at meaningful scale, with adoption evidence.
  • Experience in semiconductor, storage, or hardware product development environments, including engineering and test data.
  • Familiarity with engineering toolchains - GitHub, Jira, Confluence, CI/CD systems, and test data platforms.
  • Design-system literacy and prior ownership of a developer-facing product surface.
  • Experience operating within an enterprise AI platform (LLM gateway, RAG-as-a-service, managed inference) and enterprise data governance frameworks.

Key Competencies
  • Architect who ships - comfortable moving between whiteboard and codebase in the same day
  • Breadth across AI, data, and cloud, with the judgment to know which one the problem actually calls for
  • Product sense: judges success by engineer adoption, not by technical elegance
  • Ability to influence without authority across IT and engineering organizations
  • Comfortable with ambiguity in a newly formed team
  • Collaborative and customer-centric mindset toward the engineers being served

What Success Looks Like
  • Use cases move from prototype to production adoption within Product Development, with measurable engineering time returned.
  • Documented reference architectures and evaluation standards exist across AI, data, and cloud, and are used by the wider team.
  • Product Development engineers request the team's involvement rather than being recruited into it.
  • Solutions are built on enterprise foundations, with no parallel stacks created.


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.

About Western Digital Technologies

Western Technology Investment is a venture capital firm that specializes in offering acquisition financing to revenue-generating firms. The firm provides debt and lease financing to venture capital backed technology companies.

Western Digital Technologies Careers

Join the innovative world of Western Digital Technologies, a leader in data storage solutions, where we are committed to empowering our global team of professionals. This is an unparalleled opportunity to advance your career with a company at the forefront of technological innovation and digital storage.

Work You’ll Do

At Western Digital Technologies, you will be part of a dynamic team that drives data innovation across various industries. Our commitment to excellence and leadership in the technology sector provides a unique platform for professionals to influence the future of digital storage and management solutions.

Explore Job Opportunities and Growth

Western Digital Technologies offers a variety of job opportunities that cater to a range of skills and experiences. Whether you’re looking for an entry-level position or a more senior role, our company is eager to support your professional growth through challenging projects and continuous learning opportunities.

Internship Programs

Kickstart your career with Western Digital Technologies through our internship programs. These positions are designed to give you hands-on experience and insights into our day-to-day operations, preparing you for a full-time role in our company. Interns at Western Digital Technologies gain invaluable industry knowledge, networking opportunities, and professional skills under the guidance of experienced mentors.

Benefits and Culture

We pride ourselves on a culture that fosters diversity, innovation, and leadership. Western Digital Technologies is dedicated to providing employees with a supportive work environment where everyone is encouraged to be their best. Our benefits package is comprehensive, including health, dental, and vision insurance, employee wellness programs, and significant career development opportunities.

Join Our Team

We are continuously hiring creative, curious, and motivated individuals who are ready to drive innovation in the technology space. Explore open positions that match your skills and interests on our careers page. At Western Digital Technologies, we value diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

Professional Development and Training

Advance your career with Western Digital Technologies through our professional development programs. We offer a range of training and development options, including leadership training, skills enhancement workshops, and diversity training sessions to help you grow as a leader and innovator in our industry.

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Apply Now

Ready to take the next step in your career? Submit your resume, prepare for your interview, and join a team that’s redefining the future of technology. At Western Digital Technologies, your future is waiting.

SEARCH WESTERN DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES JOBS

Join us at Western Digital Technologies, where your career growth is integrated with innovation and leadership, empowering you to reach new heights in the technology industry.
Learn more about Western Digital Technologies
Size
65,600 employees
Market Cap
$9.9 billion
Industry
Enterprise Technology
Net Income
$167 million
Founded
1970
5 Year Trend
-0.3%
Revenue
$16.3 billion
NASDAQ
WDC
* Ladders Estimates

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