Staff Engineer, Hardware Application Engineering — Lab Operations - Santa Clara, CA, United States
Originally posted 3 June 2026 by the employer. Relisted by the employer on 22 October 2026.
About the role
As Staff Engineer for Lab Operations, you will own end-to-end responsibility for the Customer Solutions Group's Santa Clara hardware lab across all supported platforms. The role encompasses lab infrastructure, equipment lifecycle, vendor relationships, setup integrity, inventory, RMA setup readiness, budget execution, and global remote-lab enablement.
What you'll do
- Hold accountability for the Santa Clara CSG lab operations, test setup assembly, calibration schedules, preventive maintenance, troubleshooting, and documentation. - Maintain dedicated RMA test setups for field-returned chips, ensuring instrumentation, test programs, and test-hole-plug coverage are continually operational. - Own lab equipment inventory, asset tracking, utilization metrics, and lifecycle management for spares, cables, fixtures, and consumables. - Build and maintain relationships with test equipment vendors, integrators, and service providers while tracking spend against annual operating budgets. - Enable global remote lab access and maintain uptime for worldwide engineering teams across Santa Clara and international sites. - Lead logistics for customer demos and industry tradeshows, including equipment selection, shipping, on-site setup, teardown, and return.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field. - 7+ years of hands-on hardware lab and validation engineering experience. - Track record of running or owning a hardware lab, including equipment lifecycle, setups, calibration, maintenance, inventory, and safety. - Working familiarity with high-speed test and measurement equipment including oscilloscopes, BERTs, VNAs, TDR, jitter analyzers, logic analyzers, power supplies, and compliance test kits. - Understanding of high-speed networking and SerDes test concepts such as eye-opening, BER, jitter, return loss, PDN behavior, and thermal validation. - Vendor management experience sourcing, quoting, negotiating, and managing service and RMA cycles with major test equipment vendors.
Nice to have
- Experience supporting labs that test Ethernet switching, AI fabric, or high-speed networking platforms. - Familiarity with remote lab access infrastructure such as KVM-over-IP, equipment automation frameworks, lab reservation systems, and secure remote instrument control. - Experience coordinating across global engineering labs, managing lab renovations or build-outs, and adhering to semiconductor ESD controls and audit compliance practices. - Experience maintaining RMA and failure-analysis test setups for field-return units. - Experience supporting customer demos at major industry tradeshows including OCP, OFC, SC, or Hot Chips.
Skills: hardware lab, test setups, high-speed test and measurement equipment, SerDes test concepts, RMA test setups
This role has been open 142 days — well above the 109-day median for Hardware Systems Engineering roles.
Hardware Systems Engineering · Serdes Highspeed
|
Open roles in category
93
|
Median days open
109 d
|
Median salary
$200k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Marvell Technology | All employers we track in this specialty (93 roles · 35 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 4 | 93 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 79 | 6297 · 144 employers |
| Median days open | 168 d | 109 d (+59 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $200k |
Skills observed across this category: hardware lab, test setups, high-speed test and measurement equipment, SerDes test concepts, RMA test setups
Who's hiring in this category
- NVIDIA · 15 open roles · median 38 d
- Qualcomm · 9 open roles · median 198 d
- AMD · 5 open roles · median 130 d
- Astera Labs · 4 open roles · median 37 d
- Intel Corporation · 4 open roles · median 13 d
- Keysight Technologies · 4 open roles · median 151 d
How we counted: 93 open Hardware Systems Engineering (Serdes Highspeed) roles from 35 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 24 Oct 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.