Job DescriptionStrategic Account Manager - AI InfrastructureAmericas Sales - AI InfrastructureGeography: San Jose, California /
Travel: 25%
Role OverviewThis role is central to Western Digital's AI Infrastructure growth strategy, focused on driving datacenter storage adoption across a defined set of strategic platform and infrastructure customers.
The Strategic Account Manager is a quota-carrying seller responsible for owning account strategy, expanding multi-year platform opportunities, and converting architectural alignment into repeatable revenue.
This role requires the ability to operate at the intersection of infrastructure platforms, software-defined storage, and data lifecycle architectures while navigating complex buying centers.
Target Account FocusThis role will focus on strategic software-defined storage, data protection, hybrid cloud, HCI, scale-out platform providers, and infrastructure software companies. The role is expected to understand each customer's architecture, roadmap, appliance or platform strategy, and long-term capacity growth model, then align WD technologies to their product, qualification, and go-to-market priorities.
Customer Segments1. Data Platform & Cloud Software ProvidersCompanies building distributed data platforms, hybrid cloud stacks, HCI architectures, scale-out file systems, and enterprise storage frameworks.
- Align to software-defined storage, hybrid cloud, HCI, scale-out file, and distributed systems architectures
- Influence long-term product, platform, and validated solution roadmaps
- Drive integration of storage into large-scale multi-tenant, appliance, and software-defined environments
2. Enterprise Infrastructure & Systems ProvidersOrganizations delivering integrated infrastructure solutions across compute, networking, and storage.
- Position storage within full-stack infrastructure solutions
- Navigate product, procurement, and go-to-market organizations
- Drive design-ins and platform standardization
3. Data Protection & Specialized Storage PlatformsVendors focused on cyber resilience, backup, recovery, archiving, immutable data protection, and high-performance storage use cases.
- Understand data lifecycle requirements from performance to backup, recovery, archive, and long-term retention
- Align storage economics with deduplication, compression, tiering, scalability, and performance needs
- Drive capacity growth tied to appliance, reference architecture, cyber resilience, and software-defined platform strategies
What You Will OwnStrategic Account Growth & Pipeline Ownership- Develop and execute multi-year account plans aligned to platform refresh cycles, customer buying centers, and long-term revenue growth
- Maintain a high-confidence pipeline, drive forecast accuracy, and manage execution cadence across strategic opportunities
Architecture-Led Selling & Platform Influence- Position WD storage within software-defined and AI data architectures by translating workload requirements into infrastructure, scalability, and cost value
- Engage customer engineering and product teams to drive design-in, validation, platform standardization, and future roadmap influence
Executive Engagement & Complex Deal Leadership- Build senior stakeholder relationships and communicate WD's value tied to scalability, cost, and long-term platform advantage
- Own large, multi-stakeholder opportunities and lead negotiation through close across global organizations
Platform Ecosystem & Account-Specific Growth- Develop account strategies tailored to software-defined storage, data protection, HCI, hybrid cloud, and scale-out file platform providers
- Identify where WD technologies improve platform economics, density, performance-per-watt, retention cost, and long-term capacity scaling
- Build relationships across product management, hardware engineering, qualification, supply chain, procurement, alliances, and executive stakeholders
- Drive WD technology qualification into customer appliances, reference architectures, validated solutions, and future platform releases
- Convert roadmap alignment into design wins, repeatable platform revenue, and long-term supply commitments
New Technology Introduction & Adoption- Introduce and position new WD datacenter technologies, including UltraSMR, high-capacity HDD platforms, advanced firmware capabilities, and emerging storage innovations
- Identify customer workloads and architectures where new technologies deliver measurable cost, density, power, and scalability advantages
- Drive early technical engagement with customer architecture, engineering, qualification, and product teams
- Coordinate internal alignment across sales, product, engineering, marketing, and supply chain to support customer adoption
- Build customer-specific adoption plans from technical education to proof of concept, qualification, platform integration, and volume deployment
- Translate customer feedback into roadmap input for future WD products and platform requirements
QualificationsExperience- 8-12+ years in datacenter, cloud, or infrastructure sales
- Experience selling into platform providers and infrastructure vendors
- Experience selling to or partnering with data protection, HCI, hybrid cloud, scale-out file, or software-defined storage platform companies
- Proven success managing complex sales cycles
- Background selling solution-based offerings
- Experience introducing new infrastructure technologies into strategic accounts, including technical positioning, customer qualification, and adoption planning
Core Skills- Architecture-led solution selling
- Strategic account planning
- Understanding of backup, recovery, cyber resilience, HCI, scale-out file, hybrid cloud, and software-defined storage architectures
- Executive engagement and communication
- Cross-functional influence
- Complex deal execution
- Business and financial acumen
- New technology introduction and customer adoption planning
- Pipeline and forecast discipline
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.
