Director, Employee Experience

At WD, 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, WD 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®, and WD_BLACK™.

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, WD is fueling a brighter, smarter future.

Today’s exceptional challenges require your unique skills. Together, we can build the future of data storage.

The Director, Employee Experience is a senior leadership role responsible for enabling and continuously improving a high‑quality, consistent employee and manager experience across multiple regions. Positioned between HR Operations, HR Centers of Excellence, and HR Business Partners, this role serves as the connector that ensures enterprise people strategies, programs, and processes are delivered in a cohesive, intuitive, and experience‑led way.

This role leads a global Employee Experience Partner team focused on shaping end‑to‑end people journeys, strengthening manager effectiveness through scalable experiences, and supporting the activation of regional talent strategies through thoughtful, localized delivery. The Director ensures that core HR programs are implemented with consistency and clarity, reducing friction for managers and employees while respecting regional and regulatory nuances.

Working in close partnership with HR COEs, HR Operations, and HRBPs, the Director translates people strategies, policies, and programs into practical, usable experiences centered on key moments that matter across the employee lifecycle. The role enables leaders and HR partners by improving how people processes are experienced, understood, and adopted.

Operating at the intersection of experience optimization, operational execution, and change enablement, the Director, Employee Experience leverages employee insights, operational data, and continuous feedback loops to identify pain points, improve usability, and elevate how employees and managers experience HR at scale.  The Director, Employee Experience Partner serves as a critical connector between the business and how HR is experienced and understood.

Uplevel Manager Capability

• Partner with Talent Development & Inclusion (TD&I) to enable and embed core people‑leader capabilities through locally relevant, experience‑led delivery.
• Build, develop, and lead a high‑performing global Employee Experience Partner team that provides just‑in‑time coaching, practical guidance, and manager‑ready frameworks developed by TD&I and COEs.
• Strengthen manager confidence, consistency, and accountability by translating leadership capability frameworks into clear expectations, tools, and moments‑that‑matter across the employee lifecycle.
• Serve as a frontline experience multiplier, ensuring managers consistently understand how to apply people practices—not just what to do.

Deliver HR Programs Through Experience‑Led Activation

• Drive the activation, adoption, and consistent experience of core HR programs across regions in close partnership with HR Operations and COEs.
• Translate global HR initiatives into manager‑ready practices that are intuitive, locally applicable, and scalable.
• Enable leaders to engage effectively with HR programs by simplifying complexity and reinforcing expectations through coordinated communications, tools, and reinforcement.
• Provide feedback loops to COEs and HR Operations to improve program usability and effectiveness based on lived manager and employee experiences.

Support the Business through Integrated enablement

• Partner closely with HR Business Partners, Legal, HR Operations, and Centers of Excellence to deliver integrated, experienced-led people solutions aligned to evolving business priorities.
• Act as a connector that balances business needs, employee experience, and risk awareness, ensuring consistency without sacrificing local relevance.
• Enable HRBPs and leaders by clarifying roles, decision pathways, and escalation points within people processes.
• Identify friction points between the business and HR and proactively address them through experience improvements and enablement.

Drive Country‑Level HR Compliance and Governance

• Collaborate with Legal, Employee Relations, and regional HR teams to ensure people practices comply with local employment laws, regulatory requirements and internal governance standards.
• Interpret complex employment regulations and convert them into clear, practical guidance that empowers managers to make compliant, people‑centered decisions.

• 10+ years of progressive experience in employee experience, HR transformation, organizational effectiveness & manager enablement, with demonstrated impact in complex, matrixed organizations; experience in technology or manufacturing environments strongly preferred.
• Demonstrates strong regulatory acumen by partnering with Legal, Employee Relations, and regional HR teams to ensure people practices meet country‑specific employment requirements, while translating complex regulations into clear, actionable guidance that enables managers to make compliant, informed decisions
• Proven ability to build, lead, and scale high‑performing global teams across multiple regions, cultures, and regulatory environments, with a focus on consistency of experience and local relevance.
• Strong track record partnering with senior leaders, HR Business Partners, HR Operations, and Centers of Excellence to translate people strategies into practical, manager‑ready experiences that address leadership, talent, and organizational needs.
• Strong coaching, facilitation, and communication skills, with the ability to leverage storytelling to enable manager effectiveness, and drive alignment across diverse stakeholder groups without direct authority.
• Sound judgment and strong influencing capability, grounded in accountability, trust, inclusion, and respect, with the ability to balance business priorities, employee experience, and risk considerations.
• Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in ambiguity, manage multiple large‑scale initiatives simultaneously, and adapt approaches in fast‑changing, global business contexts.

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 [email protected] 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 6/30/36, 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.
• 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 [email protected].