Scientist 5, Data Science (12+ years experience . Generative AI, interpretable ML, Statistics) Full Time NEW

At Western Digital, our vision is to power global innovation and push the boundaries of technology to make what you thought was once impossible, possible.

At our core, Western Digital is a company of problem solvers. People achieve extraordinary things given the right technology. For decades, we’ve been doing just that. Our technology helped people put a man on the moon.

We are a key partner to some of the largest and highest growth organizations in the world. From energizing the most competitive gaming platforms, to enabling systems to make cities safer and cars smarter and more connected, to powering the data centers behind many of the world’s biggest companies and public cloud, Western Digital is fueling a brighter, smarter future.

Binge-watch any shows, use social media or shop online lately? You’ll find Western Digital supporting the storage infrastructure behind many of these platforms. And, that flash memory card that captures and preserves your most precious moments? That’s us, too.

We offer an expansive portfolio of technologies, storage devices and platforms for business and consumers alike. Our data-centric solutions are comprised of the Western Digital®, G-Technology™, SanDisk® and WD® brands.

Today’s exceptional challenges require your unique skills. It’s You & Western Digital. Together, we’re the next BIG thing in data.

ABOUT ADVANCED ANALYTICS OFFICE (AAO) and BIG DATA PLATFORM (BDP)

AAO is missioned with accelerating Analytics solutions at scale across the Enterprise to rapidly capture business value. These solutions target key business metrics, such as, reducing manufacturing cost, improve capital efficiency, reduce time-to market to develop new products, improve operational efficiency, and improve customer experience. These solutions are built using cutting edge Industrial 4.0 technologies and are delivered through a platform approach to enable rapid scaling. The solutions span AI/ML for improving manufacturing yield, quality, equipment uptime, and adaptive testing, Operations Research for capacity and scheduling optimization, Digital Twin for inventory and logistics optimization, and Product Telematics for managing customer fleet management solutions.

Big data platform, BDP team provides self-service data and application platforms enabling rapid scaling of services to make ever increasing business impact. You will have the opportunity to partner in making remarkable things happen across WDT’s more than dozen factories across the globe, global product development teams, customer solutions, and supporting operations like Finance, supply chain, Procurement, Sales etc

Job Description

Role summary

We’re hiring a hands-on technologist to lead the design, delivery and operational scaling of mission-critical AI/ML systems. This is a senior technical leadership role, combining end-to-end system design, deep ML engineering, research translation and team enablement. You will set technical direction, unblock engineering teams, and take direct ownership for measurable business outcomes.

Core responsibilities

• Own end-to-end system design and architecture for production ML/AI solutions — from problem framing, data design, model selection and infra to monitoring, runbooks and cost control.
• Lead hands-on technical delivery: prototype, validate, harden and ship models and agentic components into live systems; ensure reliability, observability, and automated CI/CD for models and data pipelines.
• Act as the single technical escalation point — remove blockers, resolve cross-team technical tradeoffs, and make final architecture decisions that balance performance, scalability, cost and vendor dependencies.
• Mentor and grow engineering teams (ML engineers, data engineers, OR engineers), set engineering standards, code/architecture reviews and champion best practices (MLOps, testing, data contracts).
• Translate research into product: evaluate papers, run experiments, lead IP efforts (patents, trade secrets) and supervise research to production pipelines.
• Drive multiple projects in parallel with clear prioritization, milestones and delivery SLAs; align technical plans to business KPIs.
• Define, track and report success metrics and ROI for all ML initiatives; continuously tune models and design experiments for measurable impact.
• Collaborate with product, platform, security, legal and operations teams to ensure compliance, data privacy and safe, explainable model behavior.
• Works closely with Product, Platform, Security, Legal, and Business stakeholders.
• Become a visible technical leader within the company — represent technical strategy externally when needed.

Qualifications

Must-have qualifications & experience

• 12+ years of experience in Machine Learning/AI engineering and solution delivery, across classical ML, generative models and agentic/LLM-based systems.
• Proven ability to design production ML platforms (data ingestion → training → serving → monitoring → retraining) with scalability, reliability and cost awareness.
• Deep expertise in system & distributed design: data architectures, feature stores, model serving, streaming/batch pipelines, autoscaling, retries/poison-pill handling and disaster recovery.
• Strong MLOps and DevOps experience: CI/CD for models, monitoring (data + model drift), A/B testing, canary deployment and rollback strategies.
• Strong practical experience in classical ML, deep learning and modern LLM/agentic systems (RAG, fine-tuning, evaluation, guardrails) using Python and modern ML frameworks (PyTorch/TensorFlow).
• Experience with CI/CD for models, containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), model serving, monitoring, drift detection and automated retraining pipelines.
• Strong coding and service design (APIs/microservices), testing practices, high-availability design, observability and incident handling for live AI systems.
• Experience mentoring/leading senior engineers and small cross-functional teams; comfortable as the technical owner across several concurrent initiatives.
• Prior experience publishing research and participating in IP creation (patent filings, trade secrets) is required.
• Excellent communication skills — able to present technical tradeoffs to both engineering and executive stakeholders.

Preferred skills

• Background with reinforcement learning, foundation models, LLMs and agent orchestration frameworks.
• Hands-on with cloud platforms (AWS/GCP) and on-prem hybrid deployments.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals: scalable microservices, API design, security best practices, and cost optimization.
• Familiarity with optimization/OR techniques and integrating them with ML pipelines.

System-design expectations

• Lead architecture reviews and design sessions; produce clear system diagrams, component ownership, latency/capacity budgets, cost estimations and failure-mode analyses.
• Define data contracts, SLAs, service-level objectives and monitoring thresholds for every deliverable.
• Ensure designs are modular, testable and observable — with clear automation for deployment, rollback and incident response.
• Make pragmatic architecture choices: prefer simpler solutions that meet business needs and constrain cost/dependencies; justify when heavy engineering is necessary.

Additional Information

Because Western Digital thrives on the power of diversity and is committed to an inclusive environment where every individual can thrive through a sense of belonging, respect, and contribution, we are committed to giving every qualified applicant and employee an equal opportunity. Western Digital does not discriminate against any applicant or employee based on their protected class status and complies with all federal and state laws against discrimination, harassment, and retaliation, as well as the laws and regulations set forth in the “Equal Employment Opportunity is the Law” poster.

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 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.

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 compliance@wdc.com.