Firmware Engineer, Engineering and Product Management

General Information

Job Name

Firmware Engineer, Engineering and Product Management

Country/Region

United States of America

State

California

City

Irvine, CA

Work Location

Irvine Office

Work Mode

Employees work on-site

Salary Range

$89,500.00 - $152,000.00

Exemption Status

Exempt

Business Function

Firmware Engineering

Employment Type

Full-time

Sandisk understands how people and businesses consume data and we relentlessly innovate to deliver solutions that enable today’s needs and tomorrow’s next big ideas. With a rich history of groundbreaking innovations in Flash and advanced memory technologies, our solutions have become the beating heart of the digital world we’re living in and that we have the power to shape.

Sandisk meets people and businesses at the intersection of their aspirations and the moment, enabling them to keep moving and pushing possibility forward. We do this through the balance of our powerhouse manufacturing capabilities and our industry-leading portfolio of products that are recognized globally for innovation, performance and quality.

Sandisk has two facilities recognized by the World Economic Forum as part of the Global Lighthouse Network for advanced 4IR innovations. These facilities were also recognized as Sustainability Lighthouses for breakthroughs in efficient operations. With our global reach, we ensure the global supply chain has access to the Flash memory it needs to keep our world moving forward.

Description

Are you interested in firmware, embedded systems, and solving complex hardware/software problems? We are looking for a Firmware Engineer to join our Sustaining Engineering organization and help develop, debug, validate, and deliver high-quality SSD firmware.

In this role, you will work on SSD firmware and the tools, automation, telemetry, and data used to develop, debug, and sustain it. A critical part of the role is customer engagement, including investigating customer-reported issues, reproducing failures, analyzing customer workloads and debug data, identifying root causes, and developing solutions.

You will collaborate across firmware, validation, ASIC, hardware, system, and customer engineering teams to solve complex problems that cross hardware and software boundaries.

This role is a strong fit for engineers who enjoy understanding how systems work, writing low-level code, debugging difficult problems, engaging on real-world customer issues, and using automation, data analysis, and AI-assisted engineering tools to accelerate root-cause analysis and issue resolution.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities:

• Develop, debug, test, and maintain SSD firmware and embedded software.

• Investigate complex firmware, hardware, and system-level failures using logs, traces, telemetry, dumps, and test results.

• Perform root-cause analysis, develop fixes, and validate solutions across relevant workloads and configurations.

• Engage on customer-reported issues, working with customer engineering and cross-functional teams to reproduce failures, analyze customer data and workloads, identify root cause, develop solutions, and drive issues to closure.

• Translate customer symptoms into actionable engineering problems, identifying the data, experiments, instrumentation, and engineering expertise needed to isolate firmware, hardware, host, or system-level causes.

• Develop and maintain C/C++ firmware and Python tools and automation that improve debugging, validation, data analysis, and engineering productivity.

• Work with SSD architecture, NAND, NVMe/PCIe, memory, interrupts, DMA, and embedded processor subsystems.

• Analyze large amounts of engineering data to identify patterns, correlate failures, develop hypotheses, and determine next steps.

• Use AI-assisted analysis and engineering workflows to rapidly correlate data, investigate failures, generate and evaluate hypotheses, automate repetitive analysis, and accelerate issue resolution.

• Participate in design reviews, code reviews, technical discussions, testing, documentation, and product qualification.

• Collaborate across firmware, validation, ASIC, hardware, system, and customer engineering teams to drive technical issues from initial failure through root cause and closure.

Key Areas of Work:

Your project will be selected based on team priorities, your interests, and your experience. Examples include:

• Experience developing or debugging embedded firmware, device drivers, or other low-level software.

• Experience with PCIe, NVMe, SSDs, NAND flash, storage systems, or computer hardware.

• Understanding of embedded processor architecture, including interrupts, memory management, caches, DMA, concurrency, and hardware/software interfaces.

• Experience debugging complex issues that span firmware, hardware, operating systems, drivers, and host platforms.

• Experience with debugging tools and analysis of logs, traces, telemetry, crash dumps, protocol traces, or other failure data.

• Experience with customer issue reproduction, escalation debug, or sustaining engineering.

• Experience analyzing customer workloads, system configurations, and failure signatures to reproduce and isolate field issues.

• Experience with Python-based automation, test infrastructure, data analysis, or developer tooling.

• Experience using AI/ML or generative AI tools to accelerate engineering analysis, debugging, automation, knowledge retrieval, or issue triage.

• Familiarity with Git, CI/CD, collaborative software development, and issue-tracking tools such as Jira.

Required:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Strong programming skills in C or C++, with working knowledge of Python for automation and analysis.

• Solid understanding of computer architecture, embedded systems, operating systems, and low-level software.

• Strong analytical and debugging skills, including the ability to reason across firmware, hardware, host, and system boundaries.

• Ability to use technical data and experiments to develop hypotheses, isolate failures, determine root cause, and validate solutions.

• Ability to work through complex problems where the initial symptom may provide limited information about the underlying failure.

• Strong communication and collaboration skills, including the ability to explain complex technical issues clearly and work effectively in a cross-functional engineering environment.

• Ability to work with customer-facing engineering teams and maintain technical focus while driving customer-impacting issues toward resolution.

Preferred:

• Experience developing or debugging embedded firmware, device drivers, or other low-level software.

• Experience with PCIe, NVMe, SSDs, NAND flash, storage systems, or computer hardware.

• Understanding of embedded processor architecture, including interrupts, memory management, caches, DMA, concurrency, and hardware/software interfaces.

• Experience debugging complex issues that span firmware, hardware, operating systems, drivers, and host platforms.

• Experience with debugging tools and analysis of logs, traces, telemetry, crash dumps, protocol traces, or other failure data.

• Experience with customer issue reproduction, escalation debug, or sustaining engineering.

• Experience analyzing customer workloads, system configurations, and failure signatures to reproduce and isolate field issues.

• Experience with Python-based automation, test infrastructure, data analysis, or developer tooling.

• Experience using AI/ML or generative AI tools to accelerate engineering analysis, debugging, automation, knowledge retrieval, or issue triage.

• Familiarity with Git, CI/CD, collaborative software development, and issue-tracking tools such as Jira.

#LI-LH1

Compensation & Benefits

• An employee’s pay position within the salary range may be based on several factors including but not limited to (1) relevant education; qualifications; certifications; and experience; (2) skills, ability, knowledge of the job; (3) performance, contribution and results; (4) geographic location; (5) shift; (6) internal and external equity; and (7) business and organizational needs.

• The salary range is what we believe to be the range of possible compensation for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range and this range is only applicable for jobs to be performed in California, Colorado, New York or remote jobs that can be performed in California, Colorado and New York. This range may be modified in the future.

• You will be eligible to participate in Sandisk's Short-Term Incentive (STI) Plan, which provides incentive awards based on Company and individual performance. Depending on your role and your performance, you may be eligible to participate in our annual Long-Term Incentive (LTI) program, which consists of restricted stock units (RSUs) or cash equivalents, pursuant to the terms of the LTI plan. Please note that not all roles are eligible to participate in the LTI program, and not all roles are eligible for equity under the LTI plan. RSU awards are also available to eligible new hires, subject to Sandisk's Standard Terms and Conditions for Restricted Stock Unit Awards.

• We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including 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, and the Sandisk's Savings 401(k) Plan.

• Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole discretion, consistent with the law.

Additional Information

Sandisk is committed to providing equal opportunities to all applicants and employees and will not discriminate 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 Equal Employment Opportunity is the Law (https://www.eeoc.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/22-088\_EEOC\_KnowYourRights6.12.pdf) poster.

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.