Executive Assistant to the Chief Product Officer

Job Description

We are seeking an experienced Executive Assistant to support the Chief Product Officer of Western Digital.

Reporting directly to the Chief Product Officer, you will serve as a strategic partner to the executive and partner closely with the CPO’s Chief of Staff. You will support the Product organization and collaborate closely with senior leaders across Product Management, Engineering, Operations, Marketing, Sales, and Corporate Functions.

In this highly visible role, you will be entrusted with confidential information and play a critical role in ensuring the efficiency and effectiveness of the CPO's office. You will anticipate needs, exercise judgement, manage competing priorities, and help drive operational excellence across a fast-paced, global organization. Success in this position requires exceptional organizational skills, sound business judgment, attention to detail, and the ability to build trusted relationships across all levels of the company.

The ideal candidate is proactive, resourceful, highly collaborative, and thrives in a dynamic environment where priorities can shift quickly. They are adept at leveraging modern productivity tools to improve efficiency, decision support, and execution. Supporting a global executive will require flexibility, adaptability, and exceptional self-management skills. 

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Executive Time and Priority Management

• Manage and optimize the CPO's calendar, ensuring alignment with product, business, and company priorities.
• Proactively identify scheduling conflicts, prioritize meetings, and maximize executive productivity across multiple time zones.
• Develop a strong understanding of business priorities to effectively guide scheduling decisions and meeting prioritization.
• Anticipate executive needs and recommend solutions to ensure seamless execution of priorities.

Product Leadership Coordination

• Partner with the Product Leadership Team to coordinate and execute operating rhythms, leadership meetings, product reviews, roadmap planning sessions, quarterly business reviews, and strategic planning activities.
• Ensure appropriate preparation, documentation, and follow-up actions for key product and executive forums.
• Drive accountability for action items, milestones, and deliverables resulting from leadership meetings and strategic initiatives.

Meeting Planning and Organization

• Plan and execute internal and external meetings, leadership offsites, customer engagements, analyst briefings, board-related product reviews, and team events.
• Coordinate agendas, logistics, meeting materials, and action-item tracking.
• Support planning and execution of organizational events and leadership forums.

Executive Communications 

• Serve as a key point of contact for the Office of the Chief Product Officer. 
• Manage communications, inquiries, approvals, and requests on behalf of the executive, as appropriate.
• Foster effective communication between the Product organization and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Ensure communications produced on behalf of the executive are accurate, professional, and aligned with business priorities.

Business Operations and Tool Management

• Manage expense reports, purchase orders, statements of work, and other operational processes in compliance with company policies.
• Utilize and champion productivity tools including Microsoft 365, Copilot, WD Chat, SharePoint, Teams, and other internal systems.
• Identify opportunities to streamline administrative processes and improve organizational effectiveness through automation and AI-enabled tools.

Executive Briefings and Content Preparation

• Coordinate executive briefing materials for internal leadership meetings, customer visits, industry events, analyst engagements, and business travel in partnership with the Chief of Staff, Executive Communications, and other key stakeholders.
• Ensure briefing materials, presentations, meeting summaries, and supporting documentation are organized, complete, and available to the CPO in advance of key engagements.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner with leaders across Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Operations, and Corporate Functions to drive alignment on strategic initiatives and organizational priorities.
• Build trusted relationships with executives, stakeholders, and cross-functional leaders.
• Support execution of strategic product initiatives, organizational priorities, and special projects.

Travel Management

• Manage complex domestic and international travel.
• Balancing executive priorities, time-zone considerations, and seamless logistics.

Team Leadership and Community Engagement 

• Provide leadership and functional oversight for EAs across the Product organization, including resource allocation, workload balancing, role scoping, and ongoing performance feedback.
• Own EA team culture, employee engagement initiatives, leadership events, and organizational communications.
• Foster collaboration and best practice sharing across the Executive Assistant community.
• Contribute to a high-performing, service-oriented culture within the broader organization.
• Build strong partnerships within the executive assistant community and contribute to best practice sharing across the company. 

Qualifications

• Minimum of 8 years supporting a Chief Product Officer, Executive Vice President, Senior Vice President, or equivalent executive within a large public company.
• Experience supporting executives in a complex global organization spanning multiple regions, cultures, and time zones.
• Advanced proficiency with Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and AI-enabled productivity tools.
• Demonstrated ability to manage highly complex calendars, travel, executive communications, and business operations.
• Strong experience developing executive-level presentations, briefing materials, meeting summaries, and business communications.
• Exceptional organizational, planning, project management, and prioritization skills, with the ability to manage multiple competing priorities.
• Strong business judgment, problem-solving capability, and attention to detail.
• Ability to anticipate executive needs and proactively identify solutions.
• Proven ability to serve as a trusted advisor on prioritization, scheduling, and organizational matters.
• Ability to work independently, exercise discretion, and manage highly confidential and sensitive information.
• Outstanding written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Proven ability to build trusted relationships and collaborate effectively across executive and cross-functional stakeholder groups.
• Demonstrated experience supporting executive leadership teams within highly matrixed organizations.
• Experience driving accountability for deliverables, follow-up actions, and organizational commitments.
• Demonstrated experience mentoring, coaching, or leading administrative professionals.
• Ability to effectively partner with globally distributed teams and stakeholders across diverse regions and cultures.
• Flexibility to support a global executive organization across multiple time zones as business needs require.
• Daily presence at WD’s San Jose (Great Oaks) office is required.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting a Chief Product Officer, Chief Technology Officer, or executive leader within a Product, Engineering, Technology, or R&D organization.
• Familiarity with product development lifecycles, product management practices, roadmap planning, product reviews, and agile operating environments.
• Experience coordinating executive reviews, customer engagements, analyst briefings, board-related materials, and strategic planning activities.
• Experience supporting organizations focused on technology, semiconductors, storage, hardware, software, or innovation.
• Advanced proficiency leveraging AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot and other productivity technologies to drive operational efficiency.
• Experience working within highly matrixed, fast-growing, and globally distributed organizations.
• Experience leading projects, coordinating cross-functional initiatives, and influencing outcomes without direct authority.
• Experience supporting large-scale organizational transformations, product strategy initiatives, or executive operating models.

Additional Information

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

WD 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” poster. Our pay transparency policy is available here.

WD 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.

WD 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 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.

Compensation & Benefits Details

• An employee’s pay position within the salary range may be based on several factors including but not limited to (1) relevant education; qualifications; certifications; and experience; (2) skills, ability, knowledge of the job; (3) performance, contribution and results; (4) geographic location; (5) shift; (6) internal and external equity; and (7) business and organizational needs.
• The salary range is what we believe to be the range of possible compensation for this role at the time of this posting.  We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range and this range is only applicable for jobs to be performed in California, Colorado, New York or remote jobs that can be performed in California, Colorado and New York.  This range may be modified in the future.
• If your position is non-exempt, you are eligible for overtime pay pursuant to company policy and applicable laws.  You may also be eligible for shift differential pay, depending on the shift to which you are assigned.

• You will be eligible to be considered for bonuses under either WD’s Short Term Incentive Plan (“STI Plan”) or the Sales Incentive Plan (“SIP”) which provides incentive awards based on Company and individual performance, depending on your role and your performance. You may be eligible to participate in our annual Long-Term Incentive (LTI) program, which consists of restricted stock units (RSUs) or cash equivalents, pursuant to the terms of the LTI plan. Please note that not all roles are eligible to participate in the LTI program, and not all roles are eligible for equity under the LTI plan. RSU awards are also available to eligible new hires, subject to WD'S Standard Terms and Conditions for Restricted Stock Unit Awards.

• We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid vacation time; paid sick leave; medical/dental/vision insurance; life, accident and disability insurance; tax-advantaged flexible spending and health savings accounts; employee assistance program; other voluntary benefit programs such as supplemental life and AD&D, legal plan, pet insurance, critical illness, accident and hospital indemnity; tuition reimbursement; transit; the Applause Program; employee stock purchase plan; and the WD Savings 401(k) Plan.
• Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole discretion, consistent with the law.

Notice To Candidates: Please be aware that WD and its subsidiaries will never request payment as a condition for applying for a position or receiving an offer of employment. Should you encounter any such requests, please report it immediately to WD Ethics Helpline or email [email protected].

Compensation: 119900 to 159800 (USD) (YEARLY)