Senior Talent Acquisition Manager – Japan & APAC Early Career

The Senior Talent Acquisition Manager will lead the APAC Early Career Talent Acquisition strategy while serving as the primary Japan Talent Acquisition (TA) lead and local liaison. This role is responsible for driving early career hiring outcomes across APAC, embedding strong partnerships with business leaders, and ensuring effective governance, delivery, and recruitment of Japan experienced level hiring efforts.

This position requires a strategic TA leader who can operate at both regional and local levels, translate business needs into scalable hiring solutions, and ensure strong vendor performance, compliance, and candidate experience in Japan.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities: 

APAC Early Career Talent Acquisition (Primary – Regional Scope)

• Own and drive the APAC Early Career TA strategy, including internships, fresh graduate, and university hiring programs.
• Partner with regional and site leaders to align early career hiring with workforce planning, capability needs, and future talent pipelines.
• Design and standardize early career hiring frameworks, timelines, assessment approaches, and selection standards across APAC while allowing for local nuances.
• Lead continuous improvement of early career candidate experience, employer branding, campus engagement, and conversion outcomes.
• Provide talent insights and analytics on early career pipelines, hiring effectiveness, and diversity outcomes to regional leadership.

Japan Talent Acquisition Leadership (Local Scope)

• Act as the Japan TA Main Point of Contact (POC) for business leaders, HR, and global TA stakeholders.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to Japan leadership on local labour market dynamics, hiring risks, and talent availability.
• Ensure all Japan hiring activities are compliant with local labour laws, regulations, and cultural practices.
• Represent Japan TA needs, priorities, and challenges in regional and global TA forums.
• Responsible for actively recruiting and managing requisitions for Japan, including early to executive level roles.
• Lead and govern any Japan RPO or staffing agency partnerships, acting as the primary liaison between the business and the appointed vendor.
• Set clear performance expectations, SLAs, KPIs, and governance cadence for vendors.
• Monitor vendor delivery, quality of hire, time-to-fill, candidate experience, and compliance adherence.
• Drive continuous improvement, issue resolution, and process optimization with the RPO partner.
• Ensure consistent recruitment processes, reporting, and stakeholder communication across all Japan hiring activities.

Stakeholder Management & Advisory

• Partner closely with Hiring Managers, HR Business Partners, and regional TA leaders to deliver hiring outcomes aligned to business priorities.
• Influence and educate stakeholders on best-in-class hiring practices, early career assessment, and talent market realities.
• Manage senior stakeholder expectations through clear communication, data-driven insights, and proactive risk mitigation.

Talent Intelligence, Reporting & Process Excellence

• Leverage data, dashboards, and market intelligence to inform hiring decisions and TA strategy.
• Identify opportunities to streamline recruitment processes, improve efficiency, and enhance candidate experience.
• Ensure strong governance, documentation, and operational discipline across early career and Japan TA activities.

Qualifications

Required:

• Bachelor’s degree required; Master’s degree preferred.
• 10+ years of Talent Acquisition experience, with demonstrated leadership in regional or multi-country hiring.
• Proven experience leading Early Career / University Recruiting programs at scale.
• Experience managing RPO models, vendor governance, and outsourced recruitment delivery.
• Solid understanding of Japan labour market, hiring practices, and employment regulations.
• Ability to prioritize and manage an active requisition load while leading a team
• Experience operating in a complex, matrixed, multinational environment.
• Strong stakeholder management, influencing, and communication skills.
• Data-driven mindset with experience using recruitment analytics and reporting.

Language Requirements

• Strong Fluency in both in Japanese and English (written and spoken).

Additional Information

Western Digital 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.

Western Digital 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.

Western Digital 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 jobs.accommodations@wdc.com 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 02/05/2026 (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.

Western Digital 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.

Western Digital 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 jobs.accommodations@wdc.com 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.

Notice To Candidates: Please be aware that Western Digital 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 Western Digital Ethics Helpline or email compliance@wdc.com.

About the Company

At Western Digital, our vision is to power global innovation and push the boundaries of technology to make what you thought was once impossible, possible.

At our core, Western Digital is a company of problem solvers. People achieve extraordinary things given the right technology. For decades, we’ve been doing just that—our technology helped people put a man on the moon and capture the first-ever picture of a black hole.

We offer an expansive portfolio of technologies, HDDs, and platforms for business, creative professionals, and consumers alike under our Western Digital®, WD®, WD_BLACK™, and Sandisk® Professional Brands.

We are a key partner to some of the largest and highest-growth organizations in the world. From enabling systems to make cities safer and more connected, to powering the data centers behind many of the world’s biggest companies and hyperscale cloud providers, to meeting the massive and ever-growing data storage needs of the AI era, Western Digital is fueling a brighter, smarter future.

Today’s exceptional challenges require your unique skills. Together, we can build the future of data storage.