Director, Analyst Relations

In this role, you will be responsible for building and scaling WD’s Analyst Relations program at a pivotal moment. Industry analyst perception shapes everything from customer purchasing decisions to partner confidence and investor sentiment. This role will drive all of WD’s engagement with industry analysts, and sits at the intersection of strategy, competitive intelligence, and external storytelling. You will be the primary interface between our executive team and the world's most influential technology research firms — IDC, Gartner, Forrester, and beyond — shaping how they cover us in reports and briefings that enterprise buyers rely on daily. Day to day, this means orchestrating a steady cadence of analyst briefings and inquiries, ensuring our most important voices — product, engineering, and the C-suite — show up to those conversations prepared, on-message, and with the right data. It also means tracking what analysts are writing and saying about WD and synthesizing those signals into actionable intelligence for internal stakeholders. You will build and maintain genuine relationships with the analysts who matter most to our business, moving them from passive observers to informed advocates — people who have seen our roadmap, understand our differentiation, and can speak credibly about what we're building. You'll also work closely with Corporate and Channel Marketing, Product Management, and Strategic Communications to ensure our external messaging is consistent across every analyst touchpoint. As the program matures, there is a significant opportunity to extend WD’s reach beyond traditional research firms into the broader ecosystem of paid influencers who shape enterprise technology buying decisions. You will identify, evaluate, and build commercial relationships with a curated set of enterprise tech influencers — independent analysts, and former practitioners turned content creators with demonstrated reach in storage, infrastructure, cloud, and AI audiences. You will develop an engagement model and be critical to communicating WD’s value proposition. You'll possess technical fluency and executive presence, be a skilled communicator who can translate complex product realities into sharp, differentiated narratives, and a cross-functional collaborator. Critically, you'll bring an established network of analyst relationships to the role from day one. DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: Own and manage the full analyst relations calendar, including a structured cadence of briefings, inquiries, and debriefs with tier-one firms such as Gartner, IDC and Omdia — ensuring consistent and strategic engagement across all relevant coverage areas Lead end-to-end participation in major analyst evaluations, coordinating internal stakeholders, managing submission timelines, reviewing draft reports, and driving response strategies to disputed or inaccurate positioning Develop and maintain a tiered analyst coverage map that identifies the most influential analysts across storage, AI infrastructure, cloud, and data management — and aligns engagement strategy to business priorities and competitive dynamics Serve as the primary relationship owner for key analysts, building trusted, ongoing dialogue that goes beyond transactional briefings — including regular check-ins, roadmap previews, and candid two-way exchanges that inform both analyst perspective and internal strategy Prepare executives and subject matter experts for analyst interactions, including developing briefing materials, messaging frameworks, Q&A preparation, and pre-call coaching to ensure every engagement is high-impact and on-strategy Synthesize analyst research, commentary, and market coverage into actionable intelligence reports for internal stakeholders — including competitive positioning insights, emerging narrative risks, and opportunities to reshape how the market categorizes WD's capabilities Monitor analyst sentiment and share of voice across key coverage areas, tracking how WD is positioned relative to competitors in published research, vendor ratings, and market commentary — and developing strategies to close gaps or reinforce advantages Build and manage the AR budget, including advisory service contracts, subscription renewals, event sponsorships, and paid inquiry allocations — ensuring spend is optimized against strategic priorities and demonstrable business impact Partner with Product Marketing, the PR team, and Strategic Communications to ensure analyst-facing messaging is consistent with go-to-market narratives, press releases, and campaign themes — and that major product launches or announcements include a coordinated analyst engagement plan Establish and manage a formal AR measurement framework, tracking program KPIs such as analyst sentiment scores, mention frequency in published research, and internal stakeholder satisfaction with analyst intelligence outputs Identify, engage, and manage relationships with a curated set of paid enterprise tech influencers, developing an engagement model that extends WD's reach Collaborate with content marketing teams to amplify analyst and influencer output across owned channels, ensuring third-party validation is integrated into campaign assets, sales enablement materials, and web content Build the internal infrastructure of the AR program from the ground up — including playbooks, engagement templates, a CRM-based analyst contact database, and onboarding materials that allow the function to scale as the team and program grow Represent WD at key industry analyst conferences and summits 10+ years in Analyst Relations at a global enterprise tech company Deep familiarity with the enterprise analyst ecosystem — you know the key analysts, and their coverage areas Experience steering at least one major evaluation (Magic Quadrant or Wave) from start to finish, ideally with a measurable improvement in positioning Exceptional written and verbal communication — you can translate complex technical topics i