SSD Qualification Engineer

  • Full-time

Company Description

NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions that help accelerate business breakthroughs and deliver outstanding cost efficiency. Our dedication to principles of simplicity, innovation, and customer success has made us one of the fastest-growing storage and data management providers today.

Customers around the world choose us for our “go beyond” approach and broad portfolio of solutions for business applications, storage for virtual servers, disk-to-disk backup, and more. Our solutions provide nonstop availability of critical business data and simplify business processes so you can deploy new capabilities with confidence and get to revenue faster than ever before. 

You can rely on our industry-leading solutions to lower the cost of protecting your data, business, and reputation. We bring together the industry’s best partners and technology to deliver services that help you maximize what you are getting from your infrastructure. Our collaborative approach, working as one team with one goal, means that you get a solution that is just right for you—on time and on budget. 

To support your global business, we provide highly-responsive support in local languages. From London to Austin, from Bangalore to Tokyo, we’ll work with you to solve your problems and reach your goals.

Discover our passion for helping companies around the world go further, faster at www.netapp.com.

Interested in working at NetApp? Search our open jobs - www.netapp.com/us/careers/ 

Job Description

From the newest ideas in cluster computing to the latest web framework, NetApp software products embrace innovation to deliver compelling solutions to our business. 


As a SSD Protocol Engineer in the HDD/SSD Engineering Team, you will be responsible for supporting the qualification and use of SSDs in NetApp operating system environments per NetApp’s requirements. This position requires strong hands-on debugging and analytical know-how, as well as excellent communication skills, and the flexibility to work with internal cross-functional test teams, manufacturing partners and outside vendors. The successful candidate is expected to be highly self-motivated, and to work autonomously in a fast-paced and very technical environment. Additionally, as part of the Research and Development function, the overall focus of the group is on competitive market and customer requirements, technology advances, product quality, product cost and time-to-market. Technical projects that the engineer will participate in include: exploration of products and/or process problems, definition and selection of new concepts and approaches, origination or modification of material, component and process specifications and requirements. 


This position requires an individual to be creative, team-oriented, technology savvy, driven to produce results and demonstrates the ability to lead a cross functional engineering team to drive a project to completion. 


Essential Functions: 

- The major part of your responsibility will be to plan, lead and execute SSD qualification test cycles (define & track tests/dates/HW supply logistics/..) 

- Demonstrated ability to lead technical collaboration effort between NetApp engineering teams and the device engineering teams 

- You will participate in any and/or all phases of the product development cycle from supplier selection through implementation, documentation, validation and support including: 

- Maintain SSD qualification requirements documents, and work with suppliers to resolve any documentation issues. You will work on the specification, development, validation, and support for products through the entire product life cycle. 

- Help define new SSD specific qualification tests that target new features, requirements, or issues seen in the field. Write test cases and acceptance criteria. Review partner or ODM test results. 

-Strong scripting language skills are highly desirable; for automating tests 

- Must have strong knowledge/background in storage interface protocols (NVMe, SAS and SATA) and be able to use standard analysis tools to narrow down issues 

- Must be proficient in use of Interface Bus analyzers to setup and capture traces 

- Expert trace analysis knowledge a plus 

- Understanding HW design dependencies due to FW/SW interactions. 

- Analysis and review of system level power, cooling and timing. 

- Must have a good background in Storage Appliances (storage OS, Raid, Storage HW) 

- To be successful an external candidate is expected to quickly develop strong Data OnTap know-how 

- Linux/Windows driver/storage stack know-how a plus 

- Good working knowledge of Flash technologies (MLC/SLC), controllers and FW, and failure modes 

- C language and data analysis skills a plus 


- Excellent verbal and written language/communication skills a must 

- Provide guidance and mentoring to more junior engineers. 

- As part of a team, you will lead and participate in technical discussions within the immediate group and across functions, where evaluating and executing design and development plans for products are reviewed. 

- This individual will be responsible for evaluating, defining and prioritizing projects. 

- A willingness to work on additional tasks and responsibilities that will positively contribute toward team, department, and company goals. 

- The responsibilities of the position may also include: technical leadership, guidance and coordination of ODMs, JDMs OEMs and CMs.



Qualifications

Strong oral and written communication skills are essential. 

- Experience in SSD design, qualification and development. 

- Knowledge of HDD design is a plus 

- A strong understanding of complex concepts related to architecture, design engineering, reliability, prototyping and failure analysis. 

- Ability to work collaboratively within a team environment of engineers to meet aggressive goals and high quality standards. 

- Ability to develop longer-range project plans and schedules for individual or work for a small team. 

Responsibility: 

- The tasks this individual is responsible are often unstructured and the issues addressed are less defined requiring new perspectives and creative approaches. 

- This individual will apply attained experiences and knowledge in solving problems that are complex in scope requiring in-depth evaluation of numerous factors. 

- Demonstrate good judgment in solving problems as well as identifying problems in advance, and proposing solutions. 

- This individual is able to successfully convey information to stakeholders at many levels related to the position. 

- To be successful, you must demonstrate favorable results through regular leadership and mentoring others. 

Interaction: 

- This individual must work effectively with staff to Director level employees within the function and across functions, and with external Parties. 

- Limited supervision and direction is provided, as this individual can operate, drive results and set priorities independently. 

- The ideal candidate will be a proactive contributor and subject matter expert. 

- To be successful, this individual must demonstrate favorable results through regular leadership and mentoring of senior level team members.

Minimum of 7 years of storage industry experience is required, 8 to 10 years of storage industry experience is preferred. 

- A Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering or Computer Science, a Master Degree, or a PhD; or equivalent experience is required. 

- Demonstrated ability to have completed multiple, complex technical projects.

Additional Information

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.