Principal SSD Debug Engineer - 2282

Description

The company builds flash memory and SSDs, and this role sits in its data center storage work, where enterprise SSDs run in hyperscale server environments.

You will lead complex failure investigations across the full storage path, from the host and operating system down to SSD firmware and NAND. The role calls for deep knowledge of server hardware, storage stacks, NVMe and PCIe, and SSD firmware internals, plus the ability to reproduce hard system-level failures alone and guide cross-functional teams to lasting fixes.

The team is spread across time zones.

Responsibilities

• Troubleshoot failures across applications, file systems, block layers, OS storage drivers, hypervisors, the PCIe subsystem and SSDs, and pin each one to the host, the platform or the SSD.
• Examine how SSDs interact with CPUs, PCIe root complexes, chipsets, BMCs, BIOS and system firmware.
• Investigate storage failures in multi-controller setups, covering resource contention, concurrency, thermal behavior, PLP, driver interaction through virtualization and platform-specific effects.
• Analyze Linux and Windows logs, kernel crash dumps, PCIe protocol traces, BMC event logs and system telemetry to find failure mechanisms.
• Correlate host and SSD telemetry with firmware source and hardware behavior, and drive root causes to closure.
• Lead debug work with SSD firmware, platform and customer teams, define reproducible test cases and push corrective actions through to completion.
• Work with globally distributed engineers to resolve issues across time zones.
• Write debug firmware in C across the SSD firmware stack to speed up root cause analysis.
• Investigate SSD performance problems, including tail latency, IOPS and throughput.
• Run lab work to reproduce reported issues.
• Write 8D and failure analysis reports and explain findings to customers.
• Write technical white papers on product use cases when needed.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in computer engineering or a related field plus at least 10 years in a technical field, or a Master's degree in computer engineering or a related field plus at least 8 years in a technical field.
• Strong hands-on C programming and debugging in embedded firmware or low-level systems software.
• Able to read, understand, change and debug large embedded firmware codebases.
• Solid grasp of firmware concurrency: mutexes, semaphores, interrupts, atomic operations, race conditions and deadlocks.
• Experience finding memory corruption, pointer errors, stack overflows, timing faults and hardware/software interaction bugs.
• Working knowledge of BMC functions, IPMI or Redfish, server management logs, BIOS/UEFI and platform initialization.
• Proficient with Linux storage debugging tools such as dmesg, journalctl, nvme-cli, fio, lspci, perf and kernel crash analysis tools.
• Deep understanding of NVMe and PCIe specifications, with proven experience debugging protocol-level failures.
• Able to read specification requirements and check observed firmware behavior against them.
• Solid understanding of SSD architecture: controller SoCs, NAND flash, FTL, garbage collection, wear leveling and error handling.
• Familiar with SoC architecture, memory-mapped registers, register-level programming and debug interfaces such as JTAG.
• Strong analytical skills: able to form hypotheses, design targeted experiments and confirm root causes with measured evidence.
• Strong written and verbal technical communication, with experience across globally distributed teams.
• Experience in SSD firmware architecture and/or validation and test is a plus.
• Able to travel domestically and internationally when needed.

Conditions

Requisition number 2282.

Salary range is $155,420.00 to $259,030.00.

No relocation assistance is provided.

Equal opportunity applies to all employment decisions, including hiring, promotion, pay and termination.

Benefits

• Medical and non-medical benefits, 401(k) matching and pet insurance.
• A generous PTO allotment, holiday shutdown and flexible work options.
• Career growth and personal development training.
• Flexible work-life balance.