Principal Engineer, Firmware Verification Engineering

We're looking for an experienced Principal Engineer, Firmware Verification Engineering to join our organization in Bengaluru, India. In this leadership role, you will drive the verification strategy and execution for complex firmware and embedded systems. The ideal candidate will bring deep technical expertise in firmware verification methodologies, strong analytical capabilities, and a proven track record of leading high-performing engineering teams to deliver robust, reliable products.

est Architect – SSD Firmware & Feature Validation (FVT)

Role Summary

Define validation strategy, test methodologies, automation framework and test architectures to validate SSD firmware for NAND-based systems and solutions. Test areas will span across Feature and design level FW verification.

The candidate will be responsible for architecting comprehensive validation solutions for enterprise SSD products, ensuring robust feature coverage across the FE, FTL and NIL FW modules. The role requires good expertise in NVMe/PCIe specifications, NVMe Cloud SSD specifications, OCP requirements, and customer-specific deployment scenarios.

As a Test Architect, you will drive validation strategy from product definition through customer deployment, identifying coverage gaps, defining qualification criteria, improving product quality, and reducing customer issue escape rates.

You will work closely with Firmware, Hardware, Systems Engineering, Product Management, Quality, and Hyperscale/Datacenter customers throughout the product lifecycle.

The role requires the ability to communicate validation strategies, architecture decisions, risks, quality metrics, program status, and executive-level summaries effectively. The successful candidate must thrive in ambiguous environments, influence cross-functional teams, and drive complex technical initiatives with minimal direction.

Experience

• 14+ years of experience in Embedded Firmware development/validation or 10+ years of SSD FW Verification with strong firmware and hardware debugging expertise.
• Strong hands-on experience in debugging and driving complex issues to closure
• Good understanding on NVMe and PCIe protocol including Cloud SSD specification
• Good understanding on SSD/NAND architecture
• Proven experience in defining test strategies, qualification methodologies, and validation plans covering: Host Interface layer (HIL), Flash Translation Layer (FTL), NAND Management, Error Handling and Recovery Flows, Power Loss Protection (PLP), Reliability and Endurance Validation
• Extensive experience architecting Feature Validation Test (FVT) coverage for Garbage collection, Wear levelling, Bad block management and Error injections
• Good to have experience in developing validation plans for AI-centric storage workloads including: Model Training, Checkpointing, KV Cache, Inference, Agentic AI Workloads
• Experience in test development and coding in Python
• Experience translating product requirements and customer use cases into scalable validation architectures, test plans, coverage matrices, and automation frameworks.
• Prior experience validating SSD firmware and storage solutions for Datacenter, Enterprise, AI Compute, and Hyperscale environments.
• Define, develop, and implement new validation methodologies, automation frameworks, and tools to improve test effectiveness, coverage, and execution efficiency.
• Drive feature-level risk assessments and ensure validation completeness through requirements traceability and coverage analysis.
• Collaborate with architecture, firmware, and system teams to influence product design for testability and quality.
• Lead root-cause investigations by analyzing protocol captures, firmware logs, telemetry data, system traces, and performance metrics.
• Drive critical issues to closure by interfacing with Firmware, ASIC, Hardware, Systems, Reliability, and Customer Engineering teams.
• Own and scale the test infrastructure, improving test repeatability and coverage to accelerate the qualification cycle for next-generation NAND technologies.
• Demonstrated experience of leading big initiatives spanning multiple teams and organizations and leveraging deep domain expertise to influence product roadmap
• Passionate about exploring and deploying noble methods to improve coverage, debugging, and efficiency of our FW releases.

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electronics Engineering, or equivalent.
• Good knowledge of NVMe, PCIe and Datacenter SSD specifications
• Strong understanding of SSD and FW architecture.
• Strong understanding of end-to-end storage stack interactions, including: CPU, Memory, PCIe, NVMe, Drivers, Operating Systems, Firmware, Virtualisation Layers, AI Accelerators (GPU/TPU)
• Deep understanding of Feature Validation methodologies, test architecture design, coverage modelling, qualification metrics, defect escape prevention, and validation sign-off criteria.
• Strong expertise in Windows and Linux operating system debugging.
• Strong programming and automation skills using Python, including framework development
• Experience building test frameworks, CI/CD-integrated validation solutions, automated reporting systems, and quality dashboards.
• Experience with AI infrastructure platforms, GPU-attached storage environments, and large-scale datacenter storage validation is highly desirable.
• Strong problem-solving, analytical, communication, technical leadership, and project management skills.
• Demonstrated capability to mentor engineers and provide technical leadership across multiple validation teams.
• Expert planning and execution skills with a strong focus on quality, efficiency, risk mitigation, and predictable project delivery.
• Highly skilled in leveraging AI-assisted tools for code generation, test creation, log analysis, root-cause identification, defect triage, coverage analysis, and automated report generation.

Sandisk 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.

Sandisk 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.