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