Strategic Account Manager – AI Infrastructure Sales

Strategic Account Manager – AI Infrastructure Americas Sales – AI Infrastructure Geography: San Jose, California  |  Travel: 25% Compensation: Base salary: $129,600 - $172,800 USD  plus sales incentive performance paid quarterly. On-Target Earnings (OTE): $199,390 - $265,853 USD annually, at 100% Attainment Role Overview This role is central to Western Digital’s AI Infrastructure growth strategy, focused on driving datacenter storage adoption across a defined set of strategic platform and infrastructure customers. The Strategic Account Manager is a quota-carrying seller responsible for owning account strategy, expanding multi-year platform opportunities, and converting architectural alignment into repeatable revenue. This role requires the ability to operate at the intersection of infrastructure platforms, software-defined storage, and data lifecycle architectures while navigating complex buying centers. Target Account Focus This role will focus on strategic software-defined storage, data protection, hybrid cloud, HCI, scale-out platform providers, and infrastructure software companies. The role is expected to understand each customer’s architecture, roadmap, appliance or platform strategy, and long-term capacity growth model, then align WD technologies to their product, qualification, and go-to-market priorities. Customer Segments 1. Data Platform & Cloud Software Providers Companies building distributed data platforms, hybrid cloud stacks, HCI architectures, scale-out file systems, and enterprise storage frameworks. Align to software-defined storage, hybrid cloud, HCI, scale-out file, and distributed systems architectures Influence long-term product, platform, and validated solution roadmaps Drive integration of storage into large-scale multi-tenant, appliance, and software-defined environments 2. Enterprise Infrastructure & Systems Providers Organizations delivering integrated infrastructure solutions across compute, networking, and storage. Position storage within full-stack infrastructure solutions Navigate product, procurement, and go-to-market organizations Drive design-ins and platform standardization 3. Data Protection & Specialized Storage Platforms Vendors focused on cyber resilience, backup, recovery, archiving, immutable data protection, and high-performance storage use cases. Understand data lifecycle requirements from performance to backup, recovery, archive, and long-term retention Align storage economics with deduplication, compression, tiering, scalability, and performance needs Drive capacity growth tied to appliance, reference architecture, cyber resilience, and software-defined platform strategies What You Will Own Strategic Account Growth & Pipeline Ownership Develop and execute multi-year account plans aligned to platform refresh cycles, customer buying centers, and long-term revenue growth Maintain a high-confidence pipeline, drive forecast accuracy, and manage execution cadence across strategic opportunities Architecture-Led Selling & Platform Influence Position WD storage within software-defined and AI data architectures by translating workload requirements into infrastructure, scalability, and cost value Engage customer engineering and product teams to drive design-in, validation, platform standardization, and future roadmap influence Executive Engagement & Complex Deal Leadership Build senior stakeholder relationships and communicate WD’s value tied to scalability, cost, and long-term platform advantage Own large, multi-stakeholder opportunities and lead negotiation through close across global organizations Platform Ecosystem & Account-Specific Growth Develop account strategies tailored to software-defined storage, data protection, HCI, hybrid cloud, and scale-out file platform providers Identify where WD technologies improve platform economics, density, performance-per-watt, retention cost, and long-term capacity scaling Build relationships across product management, hardware engineering, qualification, supply chain, procurement, alliances, and executive stakeholders Drive WD technology qualification into customer appliances, reference architectures, validated solutions, and future platform releases Convert roadmap alignment into design wins, repeatable platform revenue, and long-term supply commitments New Technology Introduction & Adoption Introduce and position new WD datacenter technologies, including UltraSMR, high-capacity HDD platforms, advanced firmware capabilities, and emerging storage innovations Identify customer workloads and architectures where new technologies deliver measurable cost, density, power, and scalability advantages Drive early technical engagement with customer architecture, engineering, qualification, and product teams Coordinate internal alignment across sales, product, engineering, marketing, and supply chain to support customer adoption Build customer-specific adoption plans from technical education to proof of concept, qualification, platform integration, and volume deployment Translate customer feedback into roadmap input for future WD products and platform requirements Experience 8–12+ years in datacenter, cloud, or infrastructure sales Experience selling into platform providers and infrastructure vendors Experience selling to or partnering with data protection, HCI, hybrid cloud, scale-out file, or software-defined storage platform companies Proven success managing complex sales cycles Background selling solution-based offerings Experience introducing new infrastructure technologies into strategic accounts, including technical positioning, customer qualification, and adoption planning Core Skills Architecture-led solution selling Strategic account planning Understanding of backup, recovery, cyber resilience, HCI, scale-out file, hybrid cloud, and software-defined storage architectures Executive engagement and communication Cross-functional influence Complex deal execution Business and financial acumen New