Principal Cloud Storage Architect

Company: Western Digital
Location: Rochester
Posted on: February 10, 2026

Job Description:

Company Description 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 and capture the first-ever picture of a black hole. We offer an expansive portfolio of technologies, HDDs, and platforms for business, creative professionals, and consumers alike under our Western Digital®, WD®, WD_BLACK™, and SanDisk® Professional brands. We are a key partner to some of the largest and highest-growth organizations in the world. From enabling systems to make cities safer and more connected, to powering the data centers behind many of the world’s biggest companies and hyperscale cloud providers, to meeting the massive and ever-growing data storage needs of the AI era, Western Digital is fueling a brighter, smarter future. Today’s exceptional challenges require your unique skills. Together, we can build the future of data storage. Job Description Position Summary The Cloud Storage Architect will serve as a key industry intelligence leader, responsible for continuously gathering, evaluating, and translating the latest advancements in cloud and clustered storage architectures into actionable insights for Western Digital’s test and validation teams. By monitoring how major cloud providers design, deploy, and operate large?scale storage systems—including S3?compatible object storage, distributed clusters, and hyperscale data durability models—the architect will help ensure HDD test strategies accurately reflect real?world customer environments. This role will actively share emerging cloud?storage trends, workload behaviors, and architectural patterns with System Test, Automated Cluster Environment and HDD qualification teams, enabling the creation of more representative, robust, and forward?looking tests. Key Responsibilities Continuously gather and evaluate current cloud and clustered storage industry practices, including architectures, deployment models, workload behaviors, durability methods, and scaling patterns used by major cloud providers. Monitor and analyze hyperscaler storage trends—such as S3 object storage evolution, erasure?coding strategies, zoned?storage adoption, multi?tier storage models, and distributed cluster topologies—to ensure internal teams stay aligned with real?world customer environments. Translate up?to?date cloud storage insights into actionable guidance for System Test, ACE, and HDD qualification teams to develop more representative, customer?centric test methodologies. Identify gaps between existing HDD test flows and modern industry storage designs, recommending new tests, workloads, cluster configurations, or validation scenarios that better emulate cloud?scale usage patterns. Collaborate with System Test teams to enhance HDD validation based on how cloud companies actually deploy drives, manage fleets, perform lifecycle operations, and optimize storage performance and reliability. Work with the ACE team to design cluster?level workloads and test architectures informed by current cloud storage engineering, including S3 patterns, object sizes, concurrency, and real customer traffic profiles. Act as the internal subject matter expert on cloud and distributed storage, regularly sharing findings, documentation, trend analyses, and architectural summaries with engineering, validation, and leadership groups. Evaluate emerging storage technologies and standards, such as SMR, ZNS, object?tiering strategies, or cloud?native filesystem trends, and recommend their incorporation into future HDD testing. Advise HDD qualification teams on cloud?driven reliability expectations, informing improvements in stress testing, durability tests, long?run cluster experiments, and field?emulation workloads. Produce clear technical reports, briefs, and knowledge?sharing materials summarizing evolving cloud storage behaviors, helping all test teams stay current with industry direction. Qualifications Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related fields. 8 years experience designing or operating distributed cloud storage systems. Fluency in cloud computing concepts, architecture, and technologies with hands-on experience in designing and implementing cloud solutions Expertise with object storage technologies (MinIO, AWS S3, Azure Blob, GCP Cloud Storage). Excellent communication and cross-team collaboration capabilities. Ability to translate complex cloud architecture concepts into actionable test improvements. Analytical, data-driven mindset with strong problem-solving skills. Additional Information Western Digital 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. 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. Based on our experience, we anticipate that the application deadline will be 05/06/2026 (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.

Keywords: Western Digital, Burnsville , Principal Cloud Storage Architect, IT / Software / Systems , Rochester, Minnesota