Principal SSD Debug Engineer

Job Description

We are seeking a highly skilled and technically driven Principal SSD Debug Engineer to lead complex failure investigations involving enterprise and data center SSDs deployed in hyperscale server environments.

The ideal candidate will possess deep expertise in server hardware architecture, operating system storage stacks, NVMe/PCIe protocols, and SSD firmware internals. This role requires strong hands-on debugging capabilities across the complete storage subsystem, from host applications and operating system drivers through PCIe interfaces to SSD controller firmware and NAND media.

The candidate must be capable of independently reproducing complex system-level failures, isolating root causes between host platforms and SSDs, analyzing and modifying embedded firmware, and driving cross-functional engineering teams toward technically sound and sustainable resolutions.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Troubleshoot failures across the complete server storage stack, including applications, file systems, block layers, operating system storage drivers, hypervisors, PCIe subsystem, and SSDs, to isolate host, platform, and SSD level issues.
• Investigate interactions between SSDs and server components, including CPUs, PCIe root complexes, chipsets, BMCs, BIOS, and system firmware.
• Investigate storage failures in multiple controller configurations, including resource contention, concurrency, thermal behavior, PLP, heterogeneous driver interactions through virtualization, and platform-specific interactions.
• Analyze Linux and Windows host logs, kernel crash dumps, PCIe protocol traces, BMC event logs, and system telemetry to identify failure mechanisms.
• Drive cross-functional debug with SSD firmware, platform, and customer teams, define reproducible test cases and drive corrective actions to closure.
• Collaborate across globally distributed engineering teams, driving technical issue resolution across time zones.
• Analyze host and SSD telemetry logs, corelate failures with firmware source code and hardware behavior, and drive root cause to closure.
• Work on development of debug firmware in C programming across the SSD firmware stack to accelerate the root cause analysis.
• Work on troubleshooting SSD performance issues and reduce tail latencies and improve IOPS and throughput.
• Perform required lab work to replicate the reported issues
• Create 8D/failure analysis reports and explain to the customer
• Write product use-case technical white papers as needed

Qualifications

BS degree in computer engineering or equivalent field with minimum 10 years of experience in a technical related field or MS degree in computer engineering or equivalent field with minimum 8 years of experience in a technical related field.

• Strong hands-on C programming and debugging experience in embedded firmware or low-level systems software.
• Ability to read, understand, modify, and debug complex embedded firmware codebases
• Strong knowledge of firmware concurrency, mutexes, semaphores, interrupts, atomic operations, race conditions, and deadlocks.
• Experience debugging memory corruption, pointer errors, stack overflows, timing-sensitive failures, and hardware/software interactions.
• Working knowledge of BMC functionality, IPMI/Redfish interfaces, server management logs, BIOS/UEFI, and platform initialization
• Proficiency in Linux storage debugging tools such as dmesg, journalctl, nvme-cli, fio, lspci, perf, and kernel crash analysis tools.
• In-depth understanding of NVMe and PCIe specifications, with proven experience debugging protocol-level failures.
• Ability to interpret specification requirements and validate observed firmware behavior against defined protocol standards.
• Solid understanding of SSD architecture, including controller SoCs, NAND flash, FTL, garbage collection, wear leveling, and error handling.
• Familiarity with SoC architecture, memory-mapped registers, register-level programming, and firmware debugging interfaces such as JTAG.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to formulate technical hypotheses, design targeted experiments, and validate root causes using measurable evidence.
• Strong written and verbal technical communication skills, with experience collaborating across globally distributed engineering teams
• SSD Firmware architecture and/or validation/test experience
• Able to travel when and where needed – both domestic and international

Additional Information

Req#2282; #LI-JV1

The expected salary for this position is $155,420.00 - 259,030.00.

At KIOXIA, we value the following:

• Investment in you
  • Offering opportunities for career growth and personal development training
• Open-minded management
  • Empowering employees by listening and responding to ideas, issues, and approaches
• Flexible work-life balance
  • Offering a generous PTO allotment, holiday shutdown, and flexible work options
• Variety of cultures, perspectives, backgrounds and experiences of all our team members
  • Through our opportunity, belonging and respect initiatives, our focus is to strengthen our company culture to create an environment of belonging for all
• Benefits for our team members
  • Excellent medical and non-medical benefits, 401(k) matching, pet insurance

KIOXIA America, Inc. provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.