Strategic Account Manager – AI Infrastructure Sales

Job description

Strategic Account Manager – AI Infrastructure Americas Sales – AI Infrastructure Geography: San Jose, California | Travel: 25% Compensation: Base salary: $129,600 - $172,800 USD plus sales incentive performance paid quarterly. On-Target Earnings (OTE): $199,390 - $265,853 USD annually, at 100% Attainment Role Overview This 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 Focus This 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 Segments 1. Data Platform & Cloud Software Providers Companies 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 Providers Organizations 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 Platforms Vendors 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 Own Strategic 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 Experience 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 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 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 07/28/2026 (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. #LI-VV1 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 . 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.