Senior / Principal Storage Firmware Engineer

Location: Bangalore, Karnataka Work Mode: On-site Experience: 15+ Years Employment Type: Full-Time Domain: Enterprise Storage / HDD / SSD / Firmware

About the Company

Our client is a globally recognized technology and R&D organization with strong expertise in storage, semiconductors, electronics, and digital technologies.

Its global R&D teams work on advanced HDD, flash, firmware, embedded systems, and enterprise storage technologies serving global markets.

This opportunity offers the chance to work with a strong global R&D engineering team on enterprise-class storage products, contributing to firmware architecture, performance optimization, reliability, and next-generation storage innovation.

Job Summary

We are seeking a highly experienced Storage Firmware Engineer with 15+ years of expertise in designing, developing, and optimizing firmware for enterprise-class storage products.

The ideal candidate will have strong technical expertise in HDD, SSD, NVMe, SAS, SATA, Flash Translation Layer (FTL), and storage controller architectures.

The role involves leading firmware development from architecture through product deployment, optimizing storage performance and reliability, resolving complex technical issues, and contributing to next-generation storage technologies.

Key Responsibilities

1. Firmware Architecture & Development

• Design, develop, and maintain firmware for enterprise HDD storage products involving SAS/SATA and ZAC/ZBC.
• Define firmware architecture, software frameworks, and module interfaces for scalable storage solutions.
• Own firmware/software development activities across requirements, architecture, design, implementation, validation, and release.
• Develop and improve storage algorithms and firmware features.
• Participate in firmware verification, validation, qualification, and production activities.
• Drive robust, scalable, maintainable, and high-performance firmware implementations.

2. Storage Technology Leadership

Drive development and enhancement of advanced storage technologies and features, including:

• Flash Translation Layer (FTL)

• Middleware

• Garbage Collection

• Error Recovery

• Power-Fail Management

• Storage Protocols

• SATA

• SAS

• NVMe

• ZAC / ZBC

• Storage controller architectures

• Contribute to technology evaluation and future storage product roadmaps.

• Provide technical direction on emerging storage technologies and architecture decisions.

3. Performance & Reliability Optimization

• Analyze and optimize firmware performance, latency, throughput, CPU utilization, memory utilization, and overall resource efficiency.
• Investigate complex firmware and storage performance issues.
• Lead root-cause analysis of field issues and customer escalations.
• Develop diagnostic, telemetry, logging, and debugging capabilities.
• Design and implement mechanisms to improve product reliability and fault recovery.
• Develop simulation architectures and tools to validate new performance algorithms.
• Analyze system behavior and identify opportunities for firmware-level optimization.

4. Firmware Validation & Product Deployment

• Work closely with verification and validation teams to ensure firmware quality and product readiness.
• Define and review firmware validation strategies.
• Support firmware qualification and production release activities.
• Analyze failures identified during testing, qualification, and field deployment.
• Ensure firmware meets performance, reliability, and product requirements.

5. Cross-Functional Technical Leadership

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to firmware engineers.
• Participate in architecture, design, code, and technical reviews.
• Drive technical decisions across complex firmware development programs.
• Collaborate with hardware, validation, systems, product, and manufacturing teams.
• Work with customers and field engineering teams to understand requirements and resolve complex product issues.
• Communicate technical risks, architecture decisions, project status, and resolution strategies to stakeholders.

6. Problem Solving & Technical Innovation

• Investigate complex storage and firmware problems across multiple layers of the system.
• Perform root-cause analysis of firmware, hardware, protocol, and performance issues.
• Develop innovative algorithms and technical solutions for next-generation storage products.
• Contribute to intellectual property, technology development, and engineering best practices where applicable.
• Identify opportunities to improve firmware architecture, development processes, testing, and product reliability.

Required Skills & Experience

• 15+ years of experience in firmware/software development, preferably within storage, HDD, SSD, semiconductor, embedded systems, or related product engineering environments.

• Strong hands-on experience in storage firmware development.

• Strong understanding of HDD and/or SSD architectures.

• Strong knowledge of SAS and SATA storage protocols.

• Strong understanding of NVMe and modern storage architectures.

• Experience with ZAC/ZBC or related zoned-storage technologies.

• Strong understanding of Flash Translation Layer (FTL) concepts and storage middleware.

• Experience with storage algorithms such as:

  • Garbage Collection
  • Error Recovery
  • Power-Fail Management
  • Performance Optimization

• Strong understanding of storage controller architectures.

• Experience in firmware architecture, design, development, debugging, validation, and release.

• Strong analytical and troubleshooting capabilities.

• Experience handling complex performance and reliability problems.

• Experience with firmware diagnostics, telemetry, and debugging.

• Strong technical communication and documentation skills.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with enterprise-class HDD/SSD products.
• Experience with next-generation storage technologies.
• Experience developing storage simulation architectures.
• Experience with performance modelling and optimization.
• Experience handling customer escalations and field issues.
• Experience leading firmware architecture or major storage technology initiatives.
• Experience mentoring senior/junior firmware engineers.
• Exposure to semiconductor, embedded, or high-performance computing environments.

Leadership Expectations

The successful candidate is expected to operate as a senior technical contributor and provide leadership in:

• Firmware architecture
• Storage technology
• Algorithm development
• Performance optimization
• Reliability engineering
• Root-cause analysis
• Technical reviews
• Mentoring and technical guidance
• Cross-functional problem solving

Key Competencies

• Storage Firmware Architecture
• HDD / SSD Technology
• SAS / SATA / NVMe
• ZAC / ZBC
• Flash Translation Layer
• Storage Algorithms
• Firmware Development
• Performance Optimization
• Reliability Engineering
• Debugging & Root-Cause Analysis
• System Architecture
• Technical Leadership
• Problem Solving
• Cross-Functional Collaboration

Candidate Profile

We are looking for a senior storage-firmware professional who has deep hands-on expertise rather than only general embedded/firmware experience, with the ability to work at both the firmware implementation and system architecture level.

Candidates should be comfortable working on complex enterprise storage products and solving challenging problems involving performance, reliability, protocols, algorithms, firmware architecture, and system-level behavior.