Samsung
Staff Engineer, PCIe PHY/Link Analysis
$163K–$253K
San Jose, California, United States · Staff · Full-time · Posted Aug 21, 2026
- Experience
- BS in a listed engineering or computer science field and 8+ years of relevant hardware experience, or MS in a listed field and 5+ years of relevant hardware experience.
- Education
- BS or MS in Computer, Electrical, or Electronic Engineering, or Computer Science.
About the job
Develop and support enterprise and data center SSD products by analyzing, bringing up, debugging, and validating PCIe PHY/Link and higher-layer protocol behavior.
What you'll do
- Analyze PCIe protocol architecture and integration with hardware teams and vendors; own link training, LTSSM behavior, and enumeration during bring-up.
- Debug and optimize PCIe PHY, Link, and Transport issues across NVMe SSD products, including transaction handling, error management, and data integrity.
- Support PCI-SIG and other compliance testing and provide onsite customer and lab support; travel up to 25%.
What they ask for
- Deep PCIe protocol proficiency across Physical, Data Link, and Transaction/Transport layers, including LTSSM, training/equalization, enumeration, flow control, replay/retry, and AER.
- Working knowledge of PHY operation, including CDR and equalizer components, sufficient to investigate cross-layer link issues.
- Embedded C/C++ experience and expertise with UART/JTAG/ICE debuggers and firmware debugging.
- Experience using PCIe protocol analyzers, logic analyzers, and signal analyzers.
Nice to have
- Knowledge of SI/PI for PCIe; proficiency in NVMe, CXL, or SAS/SATA.
- Pre-silicon and post-silicon SoC validation experience; PCIe power-management experience including ASPM and L1 substates.
Pay
$163,000 — $253,000 USD base salary
Tools
PCIe, C/C++, UART, JTAG, ICE, NVMe, CXL, SAS/SATA
AI focus
Samsung uses AI as a support tool in recruitment, not as a final decision-maker. Candidates are asked not to use AI to generate or assist with submitted content or live interview responses; basic preparation, grammar, and research are permitted.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative