Principal AI Program Manager

Western Digital • San Jose, CA

2d • Onsite

About The Position

This role is the operational backbone of the Enterprise AI Center of Excellence (AI CoE), housed within the Office of the CIO. You will drive the day-to-day coordination, governance, and delivery of AI initiatives across the enterprise — translating between technical teams, business stakeholders, and executive leadership while helping mature the CoE as a durable capability.

Requirements

• 10+ years in program management, technology strategy, or management consulting
• 3+ years managing AI/ML or advanced analytics programs
• Strong grasp of the AI/ML lifecycle — data prep through MLOps and monitoring
• Executive communication skills; able to make technical topics actionable for senior leaders
• Experience with AI governance or responsible AI frameworks
• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field or equivalent experience

Nice To Haves

• Experience in a CoE, CIO/CTO office, or enterprise PMO
• Familiarity with generative AI platforms (LLMs, copilots, AI agents) at enterprise scale
• Management consulting background (Big 4, MBB, or boutique advisory)
• PgMP, PMP, SAFe, or equivalent certification
• Cloud AI/ML platform experience (SageMaker, Azure AI, Vertex AI)

Responsibilities

• CoE Operations & Governance
• Run the CoE's operating cadence — workstreams, deliverables, status reporting, and steering committee rhythms
• Own the enterprise AI portfolio view: initiative tracking, dependencies, risks, and projected value
• Build and maintain intake, prioritization, and stage-gate processes for AI investment decisions
• Develop the AI roadmap with the CoE Program Lead, aligned to enterprise strategy
• Co-develop the transformation strategy with Head of AI COE and translate objectives into discrete initiatives
• Develop and maintain integrated roadmap
• Ensure accountability to committed milestones and stage gates
• Delivery & Stakeholder Engagement
• Drive end-to-end delivery across data engineering, data science, app dev, infrastructure, security, and business teams
• Partner with business units to identify use cases, build business cases, and define success metrics
• Track and report ROI across the portfolio to the CIO and C-suite
• Responsible AI & Enablement
• Embed responsible AI guardrails (bias, transparency, privacy, compliance) in partnership with Legal, Risk, and InfoSec
• Build out CoE enablement assets — playbooks, AI literacy programs, and shared tooling standards
• Drive adoption through change management, communications, and training

Benefits

• 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
• the WD Savings 401(k) Plan

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Number of Employees: 1-10 employees