Principal Engineer, Firmware Verification Engineering

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.

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