Job DescriptionWe are seeking a highly experienced Principal Engineer to lead strategy, planning, build and maintenance of SSD environmental test chambers supporting our Enterprise Product Quality organization. This role is responsible for test chamber capacity planning, capital purchases, maintenance strategy, utilization optimization, and deep technical engagement on test chamber failure analysis.
The ideal candidate brings hands-on experience with environmental chambers, strong ability to coordinate with global team across multiple time zones including India, Israel & Malaysia and the ability to work effectively with external vendors to resolve complex reliability and infrastructure issues impacting product quality and test throughput.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
ENVIRONMENTAL CHAMBER OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE
- Define and drive maintenance strategies (preventive, corrective, lifecycle management) for environmental chambers and associated test infrastructure.
- Establish standard operating procedures, health metrics, and readiness criteria for chambers used in SSD qualification and reliability testing.
- Build continuous improvement strategies based on lessons learned.
FAILURE ANALYSIS & DEBUG
- Lead root cause analysis and corrective actions for chamber-related downtime or performance issues.
- Diagnose issues spanning thermal, power, mechanical, electrical, and control systems.
- Work with external vendors and internal teams to implement corrective actions to drive cross-functional debug efforts to identify root causes and implement robust fixes.
VENDOR & EXTERNAL PARTNER MANAGEMENT
- Serve as the primary technical interface with environmental chamber vendors and test equipment suppliers.
- Lead vendor technical reviews, failure escalations, and corrective action plans.
- Evaluate vendor solutions, technologies, and roadmaps to influence future purchases and capabilities.
TEST INFRASTRUCTURE STRATEGY & PLANNING
- Own end-to-end planning for SSD environmental test chambers including capital planning and justification for new chamber purchases, capacity and utilization planning aligned with product roadmaps, long term infrastructure and scaling strategy.
- Partner with Product Quality, Reliability, Validation, and Operations teams to forecast test demand and align infrastructure investments.
GLOBAL LAB ALIGNMENT
- Work closely with global teams to ensure labs and equipment are aligned to product plans, update schedules, and best practices.
- Act as the main point of contact for making sure labs and equipment are staying aligned to company policies and procedures.
- Identify inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement and automation.
QualificationsRequired:
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
- 6+ years of engineering experience, with significant focus on test infrastructure, environmental testing, Reliability, or validation environments.
- Hands-on experience working with environmental test chambers (thermal, humidity, stress testing, etc.).
- Strong understanding of chamber maintenance, calibration, failure modes, and operational best practices.
- Proven experience analyzing and troubleshooting tester or infrastructure failures in a lab or production-like environment.
- Experience working directly with external vendors to resolve technical issues and drive improvements.
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to work across multiple teams and influence technical decisions, test infrastructure demand planning .
Preferred:
- Experience supporting SSD or storage product qualification, validation, or reliability testing.
- Familiarity with enterprise-class reliability methodologies (HTOL, temperature cycling, burn-in, stress testing, Reliability Demonstration Testing).
- Background in scaling test infrastructure for high-volume or multiproduct environments.
Additional InformationBased on our experience, we anticipate that the application deadline will be
11/03/2026 (3 months from posting), although we reserve the right to close the application process sooner if we hire an applicant for this position before the application deadline. If we are not able to hire someone from this role before the application deadline, we will update this posting with a new anticipated application deadline.
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Compensation & Benefits Details- 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.
