Staff Engineer - Product validation
Sandisk•Milpitas, CA
About The Position
Sandisk is seeking an experienced Staff Engineer to lead complex, cross-platform system validation and interoperability efforts for their next-generation NVMe SSD products. This role involves shaping technical direction, architecting scalable validation strategies, and driving engineering excellence across firmware, hardware, QA, and tools/automation teams. The position requires deep technical expertise combined with hands-on leadership, focusing on designing robust test architectures, elevating standards, and mentoring engineers to deliver high-impact, customer-grade quality at scale.
Requirements
- BS/MS in EE/CE/CS or related field with 10+ years in SSD validation, platform integration, or storage system engineering.
- Deep expertise in NVMe command/admin flows, queues, error-recovery.
- Deep expertise in PCIe link behavior, LTSSM, training, ASPM, surprise/hot removal.
- Deep expertise in Linux (blk-mq, IO scheduler, kern logs) and Windows storage paths.
- Deep expertise in Server-class BIOS/UEFI, ACPI, power/thermal states, crash dump flows.
- Robust hands-on experience with fio, multi-threaded stress patterns, and high-complexity system workloads.
- Automation proficiency with Python (preferred), Bash, and PowerShell.
Nice To Haves
- Prior ownership of system-level integration or interop validation for enterprise/cloud SSDs or server platforms.
- Knowledge of FTDC frameworks, telemetry analysis, automated RCA workflows, or system-level coverage design.
- Familiarity with validation KPIs such as DPPM, escape metrics, and system-level coverage modeling.
- Experience debugging across firmware, PCIe electrical, drivers, OS internals, and system microcode interactions.
Responsibilities
- Lead system integration strategy for functional, stress, and interoperability validation across diverse platforms and operating systems.
- Develop scalable automation for system-level workflows, including NVMe functional tests, reset/boot flows, PCIe behaviors, and telemetry/FTDC collection.
- Drive system-level triage by identifying failure domains, improving debug repeatability, and accelerating root-cause isolation.
- Collaborate across FW, HW, Validation, Tools, and Architecture to ensure system behaviors and issues inform design and release decisions.
- Enhance productivity by improving test coverage efficiency, reducing execution cycle time, and optimizing platform readiness.
- Introduce new methodologies for system interop, workload generation, stress scenarios, and validation quality gating.
- Mentor engineers, uplift technical practices, and strengthen system-level engineering rigor.
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
- Sandisk's Savings 401(k) Plan
- Short-Term Incentive (STI) Plan
- Long-Term Incentive (LTI) program (restricted stock units (RSUs) or cash equivalents, for eligible roles)
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
