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Principal Silicon Failure Analysis Engineer

US, CA, Santa Clara
Full Time On-site

Summary

Job Description

NVIDIA is seeking a Principal Failure Analysis Engineer to lead Silicon Failure Analysis (SiFA) Lab Infrastructure, responsible for enabling a high-availability, safe, and scalable failure analysis environment. This role leads the lab framework including facilities, utilities, tool enablement, safety, access control, and operational readiness so that Fault Isolation (FI), Physical Failure Analysis (PFA), and Supplier Quality Engineering (SQE) teams can efficiently root cause our groundbreaking semiconductor products. The role partners closely with FI, PFA, SQE, Corporate Facilities, EHS, IT, Finance, Procurement, and equipment vendors to ensure reliable, secure, and scalable lab operations aligned with NVIDIA’s technology roadmap.

What You'll Be Doing:

  • Lead the overall Silicon Failure Analysis (SiFA) Lab infrastructure, ensuring a safe, highly available, and scalable environment that enables FI, PFA, and SQE teams to efficiently root‑cause advanced semiconductor issues

  • Own day‑to‑day lab operations and infrastructure readiness, serving as the primary point of accountability for availability, reliability, and rapid resolution of infrastructure issues impacting failure analysis operations

  • Manage lab facilities and utilities including power, backup power, cooling water, DI/PCW, exhaust, vacuum, CDA, nitrogen, and specialty gases, coordinating upgrades, maintenance, outages, and construction to minimize disruption

  • Drive failure analysis tool enablement and reliability from delivery through sustained operation, ensuring preventive maintenance and improving uptime, availability, MTBF, MTTR, and PM compliance

  • Lead vendor and cross‑functional partnerships with FI, PFA, SQE, Corporate Facilities, EHS, IT, Finance, Procurement, and equipment suppliers to reduce downtime and ensure operational resilience

  • Own consumables, inventory, and asset management including gases, chemicals, PPE, and materials, with accurate tracking of inventory, asset lifecycle status, and preventative maintenance schedules

  • Ensure safety, chemical, ESD and regulatory governance by partnering with Corporate EHS, maintaining lab operating specifications, auditing access controls, and enforcing training, certification, safety, and IP protection requirements

  • Define and execute the long‑term SiFA lab infrastructure roadmap, leading multi‑year planning and phased expansion to support future silicon nodes, advanced packaging technologies, and increasing system complexity

What We Need to See:

  • Bachelor’s degree or higher in Engineering or a related technical field or equivalent experience

  • 15+ overall years of experience in semiconductor, R&D, or high-precision lab infrastructure

  • Demonstrated experience with capital equipment enablement, facilities coordination, and vendor management

  • Strong multi-functional leadership, communication, and execution skills

Ways to Stand Out from the Crowd:

  • Demonstrated end-to-end ownership of high-availability failure analysis labs to resolve product yield, performance, reliability, and quality issues

  • Proven experience enabling and sustaining complex capital tools with metric-driven reliability improvements

  • Achieved rigorous safety/compliance governance while delivering on a multi‑year scaling roadmap to meet the demands of the latest silicon, packaging, and system challenges

With competitive salaries and a generous benefits package, we are widely considered to be one of the technology world’s most desirable employers; we have some of the most forward-thinking and hardworking people in the world working for us and, due to unparalleled growth, best-in-class teams are rapidly growing. If you’re creative and autonomous with a real passion for your work, we want to hear from you!

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions. The base salary range is 200,000 USD - 322,000 USD.

You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until May 23, 2026.

This posting is for an existing vacancy. 

NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering a diverse work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.

About Nvidia

Nvidia

NVIDIA is one of the most influential technology companies in the world, powering the modern era of artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, graphics, and autonomous systems. Originally known for its leadership in gaming GPUs, NVIDIA has evolved into the backbone of AI infrastructure, designing the chips, software, and systems that train and deploy large-scale AI models used across industries from healthcare and robotics to autonomous vehicles and scientific computing.

For job seekers, NVIDIA offers opportunities at the forefront of deep tech, spanning software engineering, AI research, systems engineering, hardware design, networking, robotics, and developer tools. A major focus of its work is the CUDA software platform and AI ecosystem, which enables developers to program GPUs at massive scale and has become foundational to modern machine learning and data center computing. This makes NVIDIA especially attractive to engineers, researchers, and technologists who want to work directly on the infrastructure powering today’s AI revolution.

Unlike traditional hardware companies, NVIDIA operates as a full-stack computing platform company, integrating silicon, systems, and software into a unified ecosystem. Employees may work on everything from GPU architecture and data center systems to AI frameworks, simulation platforms like Omniverse, and autonomous vehicle technology through the DRIVE platform. This breadth allows teams to operate at the intersection of research and production-scale deployment, with direct impact on global computing infrastructure.

As demand for AI, accelerated computing, and autonomous systems continues to grow rapidly, NVIDIA remains one of the most important employers in technology and advanced engineering. For professionals seeking a high-impact career at the center of AI development—where breakthroughs quickly translate into real-world systems at global scale—NVIDIA stands out as one of the most dynamic and sought-after destinations in the industry.

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