Senior Staff Field Application Engineer

Job Description

Sandisk is seeking a high-caliber Senior Staff Field Application Engineer (FAE) to drive the technical execution, qualification, and deployment of our enterprise solid-state drive (eSSD) portfolio within one of our largest strategic Tier-1 OEM customer accounts. This key partner is a global leader in data center solutions and plays a massive, pivotal role in the industry’s massive AI infrastructure build-out.

Based locally in the Austin area, you will act as the principal technical liaison and internal customer advocate, bridging the gap between the OEM’s advanced server/storage architects and SanDisk’s cross-functional engineering teams. In this role, you will own the technical lifecycle of upcoming flagship enterprise programs—including next-generation eSSD architectural platforms—guiding them from initial concept validation through complex joint qualification phases to high-volume mass production

Essential Duties and Responsibilities: 

Technical Leadership & Program Management

• Lead product architecture reviews (Concept & Design), Quarterly Technical Reviews (QTRs), and future technology roadmap alignments with key enterprise and AI infrastructure architects.
• Manage the technical milestones of the Joint Development Management (JDM) lifecycle across initial Design-In, rigorous Qualification, and sustaining engineering phases.
• Establish and maintain technical risk registries for new platform qualifications, ensuring clear visibility into program status, gating metrics, and mitigation paths.
• Drive critical technical alignment syncs between customer architecture teams and internal Firmware, ASIC, and Quality groups to ensure seamless platform integration.

Qualification Execution, Engineering Support & Sustaining Activities

• Manage end-to-end qualification milestones, executing deep-dives across Program Concept Reviews, Design Reviews, and early evaluation risk assessments.
• Collaborate deeply with internal engineering and customer teams to review all hardware, firmware, security, and mechanical interfaces, managing ongoing waiver tracking and feature alignments.
• Perform hands-on failure analysis (FA) within local customer environments and labs using high-speed protocol analyzers to isolate and resolve complex Firmware bugs, PCIe/NVMe protocol issues, and data integrity anomalies.
• Act as the primary technical point of contact to rapidly triage, contain, and resolve complex field issues and high-severity customer escalations
• Champion customer requirements internally, prioritizing hardware and firmware fixes to directly protect the customer's development schedules, testing milestones, and volume-ready rollouts.

Qualifications

Required:

• Bachelor’s or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline.
• Extensive experience in field application engineering, systems engineering, or technical product development within the storage ecosystem (SSD, HDD, or Flash controller industries).
• Demonstrated background working with enterprise-level server and storage systems, including system telemetry, RAID controller configurations, and power/thermal tuning constraints within dense data center environments.
• Solid track record of leading a customer through a structured joint qualification lifecycle (such as JDM frameworks) from initial design-win to sustaining fleet health management.
•  Established technical relationships and credibility within major enterprise OEM engineering, architecture, or qualification teams.

Advanced SSD & Storage Architecture Experience

• Strong understanding in 3D NAND (TLC/QLC) technology mechanics, including Flash Translation Layer (FTL), Wear Leveling, and Garbage Collection algorithms.
• Advanced command of NVMe/PCIe storage protocols and performance determinism metrics tailored for demanding workloads (QoS, throughput consistency, and background operation interference ).
•  Familiarity with mechanical and electrical integrations for modern data center form factors, including U.2/U.3 and EDSFF (E3) form factors.
• Solid understanding of enterprise storage security requirements, including TCG Opal and FIPS encryption specifications.

System-Level & Ecosystem Knowledge

• Strong proficiency in high-performance Server and Storage portfolios, target enterprise/AI use-cases, hardware RAID controller interactions, and advanced system telemetry mechanisms.
• Competency in tuning device power states and thermal throttling algorithms to integrate seamlessly with dense chassis layout constraints, server node form factors, and rigorous airflow profiles.
•  Practical understanding of hardware reliability indicators, including Annualized Failure Rate (AFR), Defective Parts Per Million (DPPM), and Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) to properly evaluate fleet health.

Additional Information

Sandisk is committed to providing equal opportunities to all applicants and employees and will not discriminate against any applicant or employee based on their race, color, ancestry, religion (including religious dress and grooming standards), sex (including pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, breastfeeding or related medical conditions), gender (including a person’s gender identity, gender expression, and gender-related appearance and behavior, whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth), age, national origin, sexual orientation, medical condition, marital status (including domestic partnership status), physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, protected medical and family care leave, Civil Air Patrol status, military and veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics. We also prohibit harassment of any individual on any of the characteristics listed above. Our non-discrimination policy applies to all aspects of employment. We comply with the laws and regulations set forth in the "Know Your Rights: Workplace Discrimination is Illegal” poster. Our pay transparency policy is available here.

Sandisk thrives on the power and potential of diversity. As a global company, we believe the most effective way to embrace the diversity of our customers and communities is to mirror it from within. We believe the fusion of various perspectives results in the best outcomes for our employees, our company, our customers, and the world around us. We are committed to an inclusive environment where every individual can thrive through a sense of belonging, respect and contribution.

Sandisk is committed to offering opportunities to applicants with disabilities and ensuring all candidates can successfully navigate our careers website and our hiring process. Please contact us at [email protected] to advise us of your accommodation request. In your email, please include a description of the specific accommodation you are requesting as well as the job title and requisition number of the position for which you are applying.

Based on our experience, we anticipate that the application deadline will be 06/24/2026 (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.