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Western Digital · 1 day ago

Principal Cloud Storage Architect

Rochester, MN

Full-time

Onsite

Lead/Staff

8+ years exp

Western Digital is a company focused on innovation in technology, aiming to push boundaries in data storage solutions. The Cloud Storage Architect will be responsible for evaluating and translating advancements in cloud storage architectures into actionable insights for testing and validation teams, ensuring that HDD test strategies reflect real-world environments.

Big DataComputerHardwareManufacturingSoftware

H1B Sponsor Likely

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

Qualification

Cloud storage architectureDistributed cloud storage systemsObject storage technologiesCloud computing conceptsAnalytical mindsetCommunication skillsProblem-solving skillsCross-team collaboration

Required

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

Company

Western Digital

Glassdoor3.6

Western Digital helps customers capture, preserve, access, and transform an ever-increasing diversity of data.

Founded in 1970

Milpitas, California, USA

10001+ employees

https://www.westerndigital.com

H1B Sponsorship

Western Digital has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)

Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship

Represents job field similar to this job

Trends of Total Sponsorships

2025 (234)

2024 (537)

2023 (448)

2022 (580)

2021 (525)

2020 (332)

Funding

Current Stage

Public Company

Total Funding

$901.37M

2023-10-31Post Ipo Debt· $1.37M

2023-01-31Post Ipo Equity· $900M

2015-09-30Post Ipo Equity

Leadership Team

Sesh Tirumala

SVP, CIO

Alvin B. Phillips

Founder

Recent News

East Bay Times

Meta and Western Digital trim 100 South Bay jobs in additional layoffs

2026-02-07