Vice President, Platform Engineering
Western Digital · San Jose, CA
- Level
- Director+
- Team
- Manufacturing
- Degree
- Required
- Experience asked
- 15+ years
- Industry
- Industrial
- Posted
- 2 days ago
The role in 30 seconds
A director-level manufacturing role at Western Digital (industrial) in San Jose, CA. Vendor & Supply Chain Management: Lead technical engagements and design reviews with silicon suppliers, component vendors, and CM partners to enforce Design for Manufacturability (DFM), assembly (DFA), and cost-reduction targets.
- They ask for
- 15+ years · degree required
- Tools it names
- Validation (IQ/OQ/PQ), Assembly lines, Tooling
Read from the posting. The full description is below.
From the plant jobs report · week of November 2, 2026
Manufacturing Engineer roles in California: typical posted base $111k–$173k.
Median of the low and high ends of 165 live postings that list pay, out of 436 manufacturing engineer openings in California, read from manufacturers' own careers sites.
California plant jobs report →Pay by team and state →What moves pay →
How this role compares
Against 435 other live manufacturing postings in California.
- Base pay
- Not listed in this posting
- Experience asked
- More than usual (15+ vs 5+)
Typical $109k–$159k, from 144 postings that list pay.
Similar roles usually ask 5+ years.
Skills these teams ask for most
- ✓ Tooling 50%
- ✓ New product launch 44%
- Root cause 37%
- Automation 35%
- Machining 27%
- CATIA / NX 26%
✓ = this posting asks for it too. % = share of similar postings that mention it.
Stands out: this posting asks for Assembly lines, which few similar roles mention. If you have it, lead with it.
At a glance
Pulled from the posting text. If it's not listed here, the posting didn't say.
How to get in at this plant
Five moves over a week or two. The first one takes ten minutes.
- 1
Pick 2–3 people on the Manufacturing team at Western Digital
Engineers who joined in the last year or two reply the most. Use the team search on this page to find them.
- 2
Send a short, curious note
One real question about their work. No favors yet. Each person gets a different note, written for this role.
- 3
Turn a reply into a short call
Questions worth asking about this team:
- What does a normal week look like on your team?
- Is the work mostly new product launches or sustaining existing lines?
- How much time do you spend on the floor versus at a desk?
- How did you land the job? What stood out in your interviews?
- 4
Apply with someone vouching for you
If the call went well, ask whether they’d pass your résumé to the hiring manager. Send your résumé link, apply that day, and let them know.
- 5
Bring proof to the interview
One page of before-and-after numbers from projects you led: scrap, OEE, cycle time, cost. Plant managers hire on results.
Full description from Western DigitalAs posted on their careers site.ShowHide
Responsibilities
- ◆Strategic Execution: Drive the development lifecycles of next-generation high-capacity storage enclosures from initial concept through architecture, board bring-up, validation, and global high-volume manufacturing.
- ◆Engineering Leadership: Build, manage, and mentor a high-performance team of engineering directors, managers, and principal architects across electrical, mechanical, firmware, and operations domains.
- ◆Manufacturing Operations & CM Governance: Oversee the manufacturing engineering and operations teams responsible for transitioning designs from the lab to the factory floor. Own product delivery through Contract Manufacturing (CM) execution, ensuring seamless handoffs, yields, and quality controls and acting as the executive escalation point.
- ◆NPI & Mass Production Lifecycle: Drive early-stage prototype NPI (New Product Introduction) builds, factory bring-up, and engineering validation tests (EVT/DVT/PVT), while establishing the processes required to scale smoothly into high-volume mass production.
- ◆Vendor & Supply Chain Management: Lead technical engagements and design reviews with silicon suppliers, component vendors, and CM partners to enforce Design for Manufacturability (DFM), assembly (DFA), and cost-reduction targets.
- ◆Operational Excellence: Oversee the departmental budget, capital allocation for lab instrumentation, headcount planning, factory tooling costs, and organizational risk mitigation strategies.
- ◆Customer knowledge: Demonstrate deep understanding of customers and their data center ecosystems to inform technical product development.
️ Technical & Operations Domain Expertise
- ◆High-Speed Bus Interfaces: Directional oversight on complex multi-layer PCB design incorporating cutting-edge signaling interfaces like PCIe Gen 6/7, SAS (12G/24G), SATA, and high-speed SERDES.
- ◆Chassis & Power Engineering: Ensuring physical architectures successfully balance high disk/flash densities with strict thermal dynamics, airflow constraints, and robust Power Distribution Networks (PDN).
- ◆Industrial & Manufacturing Scaling: Deep understanding of manufacturing test development, structural test metrics, assembly line optimization, and scaling supply chain logistics for complex electromechanical assemblies.
- ◆Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering, or a highly related technical field.
- ◆Experience: 15+ years of hands-on engineering experience, including 8+ years in multi-layered senior management roles, leading teams of 50+ employees, geographically spread in US and Asia, directly handling enterprise hardware platforms and NPI-to-mass-production lifecycles.
- ◆Proven track record of delivering programs on-time and successful ramp into high volume production
- ◆8+ years of experience working directly with tier-1 & tier-2 enterprise customers. Customer interface to understand requirements, propose solutions and architecture, and establish long-term engineering/exec-level relationships.
- ◆CM & Vendor Management: Proven track record of managing tier-1 global Contract Manufacturers (CMs) or Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs) to deliver hardware at hyperscale volumes.
- ◆Communications: Outstanding executive communication skills with a proven capability to articulate complex technical trade-offs (e.g., design tolerance vs. manufacturing yield vs. BOM cost) directly to board-level stakeholders.
- ◆Track record of transforming engineering organizations through stronger methodology, platform reuse, schedule predictability, and improved first-pass execution.
- ◆Experience operating in a global company environment with distributed teams across the Americas, Asia, and EMEA.
Show full description ↓Show less ↑
The VP of Engineering for Platforms will lead the engineering organization responsible for designing, developing, and scaling next-generation, high-density hardware storage architectures. This role owns the execution of the storage platform roadmap—spanning ultra-dense JBODs and storage servers. You will manage a cross-functional department of hardware, firmware, and manufacturing operations engineers to deliver reliable, highly serviceable, and cost-efficient hardware storage solutions optimized for hyperscale datacenters and modern AI workloads.
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