Senior Technologist - Applications Engineering

Job Description

The Western Digital Platforms Group offers data center ready, next-generation disaggregated storage platforms via our Ultrastar Data, Ultrastar Edge, OpenFlex and RapidFlex portfolios.

One particular focus is helping customers simplify NVMe/NVMe-oF storage deployment, with our enhanced OpenFlex Data24 3200 NVMe-oF JBOF/Storage platform, along with the next-gen RapidFlex A2000 and C2000 NVMe-oF fabric bridge devices (FBDs). These storage solutions are enabling an ecosystem, whilst providing more flexibility and choice for simplifying NVMe and NVMe-oF deployments. Western Digital is currently the only company with vertical integration capabilities targeting both ends of the Ethernet wire to deliver solutions where data travels from the server initiator to the storage target.

In an era where AI/ML is emerging as the most impactful technology in decades, data centers are seeing new class of power and performance hungry GPU AI servers being introduced. This growing demand will require vendors to pivot their solutions to address the challenges presented with such scale; be it in compute, storage, power, cooling and networking. Western Digital's architectural approach to agnostic storage disaggregation and native ethernet ecosystems allows us to sit at the forefront in addressing these rapidly evolving data center requirements.

Within the Western Digital Platforms BU, the Applications Engineering team's charter is to provide systems, performance, application, and solutions engineering expertise to help drive product development, product awareness, sales enablement, and end customer solution development / implementation.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Enjoy a diverse set of responsibilities and challenges. Fundamentally you will support our Platforms portfolio by providing advanced technical subject matter expertise and thought leadership and in turn, contribute to the shaping of the technical and business strategy of the Platforms BU.

• Evangelize product at industry events, trade shows, seminars, and customer briefings.

• Forge close collaboration with our technical and strategic partners, professional networks, and customers whilst coordinating internal teams in support of business objectives.

• Provide guidance and best practices to sales teams and help refine sales strategy and tactics.

• Possess extensive experience and detailed knowledge of common industry storage applications (e.g. scale-out filesystems, databases, object storage, hypervisors, composability frameworks), as well as distributed storage and deployment architectures.

• You will understand the latest technological advancements in the enterprise storage space and bring an in-depth understanding of system architectures and high-speed communications interface protocols such as SAS and NVMe-oF (RoCE and TCP) along with their supporting technologies.

• Ideally you will have applied experience with GPU architectures such as NVIDIA CUDA and GPUDirect Storage including associated benchmarking tools (such as MLPerf).

• Act as a subject matter expert for new composable infrastructure products and educate customers and partners on differentiating product technologies.

• Assist sales team members in advancing and closing individual opportunities and take ownership of technical responsibilities within customer engagements.

• Assist customers with evaluations, benchmarks, system configurations, and system installations.

• Provide feedback from partners, customers, and subject matter experts to internal teams to support the definition of new products, product enhancements, and technical collateral.

• Be responsible for the planning, development, and delivery of technical training for sales team members.

• Assist in the development of technical collateral on best practices, proof-of-concept designs, and performance benchmarking methodologies.

• Monitor market trends, customers, and competitors and provide strategies to counter competitors.

• Be an expert in product use and keep up to date with technological advances.

• Participate in the creation and implementation of product positioning and messaging.

• Participate in the development of high impact sales tools.

• Engage in joint presentations with sales for key customers and be comfortable managing complex conversations with both technical and non-technical stakeholders by demonstrating excellent presentation, explanatory and expectation handling skills.

• Whilst leading by example, mentoring, and guiding junior team members and encouraging a culture of continuous learning and development within the team is a core value within Applications Engineering that you will be expected to uphold.

• Travel is required for this role. Travel will primarily be domestic with occasional international travel. Travel would be for industry events, customer meetings, and internal meetings at department locations (e.g. Colorado Springs, Co, San Jose, Ca).

Qualifications

REQUIRED

• Bachelor's degree in EE, Computer Science or Computer Engineering preferred, a degree in Marketing or a related field with a technical focus will also be considered.

• Strong background (8-10 years) in data center storage and related technologies as a development engineer, applications engineer, product line manager or in a technical marketing or program management position.

• 10+ years proven experience in a role directly supporting field operations for data center storage products.

• Experience in authoring technical documents presentations, best practices guides, and white papers.

• Proven ability to work cross-functionally with Sales, Engineering, Business Operations, Product Marketing and Customer service and support.

SKILLS

• Strong experience in networking is a plus.

• Excellent verbal, written, and presentation development skills with the ability to convey complex ideas in a clear and simplified manner.

Additional Information

Western Digital is committed to providing equal opportunities to all applicants and employees and will not discriminate 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 Equal Employment Opportunity is the Law poster.

Western Digital 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.

Western Digital 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 jobs.accommodations@wdc.com 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 May 16, 2024, 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

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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.

• You will be eligible to participate in Western Digital's Short-Term Incentive (STI) Plan, 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 Western Digital'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 Western Digital 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.