Technologist, Senior DevOps & Automation Architect (14 + years) Ansible , Kubernetes, Tools Modernization , AI Adoption

Company Description

Western Digital's reliance on software development workflows is growing by leaps and bounds as a leading provider of Storage Solutions. As Secure Development Factory (SDF) Senior Infrastructure Engineer, you will be at the heart of Western Digital’s engineering process, delivering the software development tools and infrastructure that empower engineering teams to develop and deliver high-quality products quickly. The sheer diversity of Western Digital’s products demands a secure development infrastructure that allows teams to develop many types of software at scale without sacrificing security, development velocity, stability, code quality or code health.

This position requires partnering with WDC engineering teams, IT teams, and others to deliver the right scalable tools and infrastructure that help engineers develop, test, debug and release software and products quickly. We impact thousands of Western Digital developers worldwide and millions of customers by increasing the pace of product development, improving product quality, and directly impacting WDC’s bottom line.

The ideal candidate will have a passion for technology, a relentless focus on the customer experience and an ability to multitask, assimilate data, make decisions and prioritize complex work while paying attention to the details. Communication with internal customers, vendors and co-workers clearly and professionally is an absolute must.

Job Description

Description

This is a hands-on role for a deeply technical, self-driven Senior DevOps & Automation Engineer / Architect who enjoys building and implementing automation and AI-powered solutions. The role is intended for individuals who want to stay close to the technology and focus on technical implementation and innovation, rather than responsibilities related to program or functional management.

The ideal candidate will bring strong practical expertise in Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD engineering, cloud-native DevOps, and AI/ML-driven automation, with a focus on delivering scalable, self-service, and intelligent engineering platforms. You will be expected to independently identify opportunities, develop solutions, and drive innovations using technologies such as Terraform, Ansible, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, Kubernetes, and LLM frameworks.

This role is best suited for engineers who want to directly contribute to architecture and implementation and play a key role in advancing automation and productivity across the engineering organization.

Key Responsibilities:

DevOps Engineering & Automation

• Build and maintain robust CI/CD pipelines, web tools development, secure build and release automation, and environment provisioning using Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform, Ansible).
• Continuously improve automation frameworks to ensure speed, reliability, and repeatability.
• Lead modernization of the DevOps and engineering toolchain, replacing legacy systems with scalable, cloud-native, and AI-augmented alternatives.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to align tooling with future business and engineering needs.
• Proactively identify areas for improvement in developer workflows, tooling, and platform capabilities.
• Design and implement self-service platforms and internal developer tools that reduce manual effort and improve development velocity.
• Champion engineering productivity initiatives, focusing on tool usability, automation coverage, and feedback loops.

AI Adoption & Agentic Automation

• Drive the use of AI and Agentic AI to automate DevOps workflows, observability responses, and system optimization.
• Collaborate on implementing intelligent, proactive automation to reduce operational toil and improve platform resilience.

Observability & Operational Intelligence

• Integrate with observability platforms (e.g., Datadog, Dynatrace) to ensure full-stack visibility and traceability.
• Develop dashboards and visualizations to enable real-time insights into system health, productivity, and automation performance.

Qualifications

Qualifications:

• 14+ years of hands-on experience in DevOps, SRE, or platform engineering.
• Proven expertise in CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, automation scripting, and cloud-native technologies (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Demonstrated ability to work independently, drive initiatives end-to-end, and deliver measurable outcomes.
• Experience implementing AI/ML or LLM-based solutions in DevOps or operations environments is a strong plus.
• Strong understanding of modern development workflows, DevSecOps principles, and developer productivity tooling.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills with cross-functional teams.

Additional Information

Preferred Technologies:

• Terraform, Ansible
• Python, Go, Bash
• Gerrit, Zuul, Artifactory
• GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, ArgoCD
• Docker, Kubernetes, Helm
• Datadog, Dynatrace, Elastic, OpenTelemetry
• AI/LLM tooling