Senior SSD Debug Engineer - Data Center Firmware

KIOXIA America, Inc.; Folsom (CA); On-site; USD 134,000 - 223,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Career growth and training

Flexible work options

Generous PTO and holidays

401(k) matching

Pet insurance

Job summary

KIOXIA America, Inc. is seeking an SSD Debug Engineer to triage and debug data center SSD failures. You will collaborate with Product Support Engineering to root cause issues, drive action plans, and deliver customer‑acceptable solutions in high‑pressure situations.

The role requires strong NVMe/PCIe expertise, firmware development in C, and the ability to work with global teams across time zones. Domestic and international travel is expected.

Qualifications

• Proven NVMe and PCIe protocol experience debugging complex SSD issues.
• SSD Firmware architecture and/or validation/test experience.
• SSD Firmware development/debug experience in C programming.
• Excellent understanding of debug tools: PCIe protocol analyzers, Oscilloscope, Linux tools.
• Data center/server storage knowledge and experience.
• Open-Source SSD Tools, such as, NVMe-CLI, FIO.
• Good understanding of Open Compute Platform (OCP) specifications.
• Experience with Telemetry, Host logs (dmesg, event logs), Firmware trace logs.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills (English).
• Able to travel when and where needed - both domestic and international.

Responsibilities

• Root cause analysis for data center SSD failures on hyperscale server platforms, isolating issues across host, transport, firmware and media.
• Drive cross-functional debug with 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 telemetry logs, correlate 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.

Skills

NVMe/PCIe debugging

SSD firmware development

Data center/storage knowledge

Verbal & written communication

Willing to travel

Education

B.S. in Computer Engineering or equivalent

M.S. in Computer Engineering or equivalent

Tools

PCIe protocol analyzers

Oscilloscope

Linux tools

NVMe-CLI

FIO

Job description

KIOXIA America, Inc. is seeking an SSD Debug Engineer to triage and debug data center SSD failures. You will collaborate with Product Support Engineering to root cause issues, drive action plans, and deliver customer‑acceptable solutions in high‑pressure situations.

The role requires strong NVMe/PCIe expertise, firmware development in C, and the ability to work with global teams across time zones. Domestic and international travel is expected.