Data Products Lead

Company Description

The future. It's on you. You & Western Digital.

We've been storing the world's data for more than 50 years. Once, it was the most important thing we could do for data. Now we're helping the world capture, preserve, access and transform data in a way only we can.

The most game-changing companies, consumers, professionals, and governments come to us for the technologies and solutions they need to capture, preserve, access, and transform their data.

But we can't do it alone. Today's exceptional data challenges require your exceptional skills. It's You & Us. Together, we're the next big thing in data.

Western Digital® data-centric solutions are found under the G-Technology, HGST, SanDisk®, Tegile, Upthere, and WD® brands.

Job Description

Job Description - Data Products Lead

As the Leader of our Data as a Product (DaaP) initiative within the Enterprise Analytics team, you will be a pivotal change agent in our data transformation. You will report to the Senior Manager of Data Governance and Data Quality and will be responsible for spearheading the shift from traditional, centralized data management to a domain-oriented, data product-based approach.

This role will evangelize DaaP concepts and operationalize a federated governance framework required to treat Western Digital's enterprise data as discoverable, trustworthy, and reusable assets. Your success will be measured by our ability to accelerate data-driven decision-making, reduce time-to-insight, and establish a single, trusted source of truth for our key data domains.

Key Responsibilities

Your primary responsibility is to develop, implement, and evangelize the "Data as a Product" model. This includes:

Strategy & Evangelism

• Develop and execute the strategic roadmap for operationalizing the Data as a Product model

• Act as the primary evangelist across the organization, educating stakeholders (from executives to analysts) on the value of a product-oriented data culture.

• Collaborate with business domains (e.g., HR, Finance, Supply Chain, Sales) to identify, prioritize, and scope high-value data products.

Data Product Lifecycle & Standards

• Define the standards and certification process that makes a dataset an official "Data Product." This includes ensuring every product is:

• Discoverable: Fully documented and cataloged with rich metadata in our data governance platform (Atlan).

• Addressable: Accessible to consumers via clear, versioned, and secure endpoints (e.g., APIs, streaming pipelines, or queryable views).

• Trustworthy: Packaged with clear ownership, data quality metrics (SLOs/SLAs), and security/policy definitions.

• Self-Describing: Includes complete lineage, models, and documentation, enabling consumers to understand and use the product with minimal friction.

• Identify and rank critical data objects to structure as products

• Ensure alignment with overall organizational data governance policies and goals.

• Integrate with the quality data process and systems to ensure adequacy, accuracy and legitimacy of data products

• Promote the reusability and scalability of data products to support multiple use cases and eliminate manual data preparation and duplication.

Federated Governance & Stewardship

• Partner with domain leaders to implement a domain centric, federated data stewardship model, empowering domain-level stewards to be responsible for the quality and lifecycle of their data products.

• Create and enforce global policies for effective data management, quality, and security, ensuring these standards are automated and embedded within the data product lifecycle.

• Integrate data product standards with existing data quality and InfoSec processes to ensure all published data is accurate, compliant, and secure.

• Work collaboratively with other data governance teams to ensure a cohesive, enterprise-wide governance process.

• Drive iterative user research and continuous feedback loop to stay current with business on data products priorities and general feedback.

Technology & Enablement

• Partner with data platform and engineering teams to ensure the underlying technology (e.g., data lakehouse) supports the self-serve creation, deployment, and monitoring of data products.

• Leverage AI methods to accelerate data product implementation, such as automating business metadata creation, discovery, lineage, and data quality checks.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field.

• 7+ years in Data Management, Data Governance, or Data Architecture, with a proven track record of implementing enterprise-wide data governance frameworks.

• Hands-on experience with a modern data catalog and governance platform (very recent Atlan hands-on experience is a must) .

• Demonstrated business acumen and direct experience with governance (principles like discoverability, trust and discoverability) with various business segments such as Product, Sales and Finance to create high quality data products

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to interpret all business data domains and identify areas for improvement.

• Strong understanding of modern data architectures (Data Warehouse/Data Lakehouse), data movement (pipelines), and data consumption patterns (APIs, BI). Specifically experience with implementations involving canonical layer as a feature of the architecture.

• Proven experience creating and enforcing data policies that deliver measurable business results (e.g., improved data trust, faster time-to-insight).

• Exceptional program management and organizational skills, with the ability to manage complex, cross-functional initiatives. Experience matrix managing a large community of contributors.

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with a proven ability to evangelize new concepts and influence stakeholders at all levels of the organization.

• Strong documentation skills to align effort with architecture.

• Experience with Agile delivery methods & rapid prototyping to reduce time-to-market for results

Experience with access controls and InfoSec principles like least privilege

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 ( EEOC\ KnowYourRights6.12.pdf) " poster. Our pay transparency policy is available here ( .

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. 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 02/11/2026 (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.

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