Failure Analysis Technical Lead

  • Location:
    San Jose, California, US
  • Area of Interest
    Supply Chain
  • Compensation Range
    184000 USD - 227300 USD
  • Job Type
    Professional
  • Technology Interest
    *None
  • Job Id
    1439161

Application window expected to close by 06/16/2025

Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.

Meet the Team

We are Cisco's Failure Analysis & Prevention team, which plays a critical role in ensuring high Customer/Product quality. The Technology and Quality organization is responsible for delivering customer focused quality, reliability solutions and infrastructure for Cisco products. It is committed to driving a competitive advantage for Cisco by ensuring innovation and excellence in manufacturing technology, test, and component engineering, NPI, and closed-loop quality management.

Your Impact

You are a problem solver and looking for continuous product improvement. You love to learn, grow, and work in a constantly evolving environment. You are a self-starter who thrives with learning information quickly and uses resources to research and resolve issues.

  • Failure Analysis Technical Lead will drive the improvements in the accuracy of the fault duplication and isolation.
  • Provide direction and techniques on customer’s issues.
  • Engage Design engineering and communicate findings and resolutions for HW and SW field issues.
  • Coordinate the Failure Analysis cases review meeting with Cisco teams and suppliers.
  • Defect detection including containment analysis.
  • Work closely with a multi-functional team of Product Leads, Technical Leads and Customer Support to accelerate replicate customer reported issue.
  • Articulate key technical issues to stakeholders, sense issues early, identify impact and partner to drive resolution.
  • Ensure EMS partners deliver timely and accurate results in duplicating, isolating root cause of customer issues.
  • Drive innovation, new technology/processes.
  • Organize, plan, track and close-out design, components, manufacturing issues associated with the products.
  • Evolving the Product debug document over the Product Life Cycle.
  • Responsible for communication on key issues along with quality group to design engineering, accounts and Escalations teams.
  • Proactive Engagement with customer facing teams on reducing RMA, rightsizing FA, and getting more debug and troubleshooting information from Field.
  • Collaborate with PQE/CEs and drive Corrective/ Preventive action. Design Issue, MFG Issue, Process, supplier issue.
  • Participate in initiatives to enhance existing test strategies, methodologies and test/diagnostic coverage for field returns to aim for improvements in the accuracy of the fault duplication and isolation.

Minimum Qualifications

  • Bachelors in electrical or computer engineering with 8+ years of related experience.
  • Experience with High-Speed Network Interfaces along with previous hands-on board design expertise and familiarity with board design tools such as Cadence Allegro or similar tools.
  • Hardware design, schematics generation, and design validation for service provide routing products.
  • Experience with sophisticated high speed board design and board bring-up.
  • Knowledge of Sonic operating system on 8000 products.

Preferred Qualifications

  • Masters degree in electrical or computer engineering.
  • Experience with high-speed SERDES (>=25G) system design, signal integrity issues, and power distribution techniques
  • Ability to collaborate with eCAD, FPGA, Power, Mechanical, Signal integrity, and Manufacturing teams.
  • Familiarity with leading-edge CPUs such as Intel or AMD , analog and networking components such as PCIe switches, PHY, retimers, voltage regulators.
  • Experience in unit test methodologies and agile working environment along with sophisticated CPU design and bring-up is a plus.

Why Cisco

#WeAreCisco where every individual brings their unique skills and perspectives together to pursue our purpose of powering an inclusive future for all.

Our passion is connection—we celebrate our employees’ diverse set of backgrounds and focus on unlocking potential. Cisconians often experience one company, many careers where learning and development are encouraged and supported at every stage. Our technology, tools, and culture pioneered hybrid work trends, allowing all to not only give their best, but be their best.

We understand our outstanding opportunity to bring communities together and at the heart of that is our people. One-third of Cisconians collaborate in our 30 employee resource organizations, called Inclusive Communities, to connect, foster belonging, learn to be informed allies, and make a difference. Dedicated paid time off to volunteer—80 hours each year—allows us to give back to causes we are passionate about, and nearly 86% do!

Our purpose, driven by our people, is what makes us the worldwide leader in technology that powers the internet. Helping our customers reimagine their applications, secure their enterprise, transform their infrastructure, and meet their sustainability goals is what we do best. We ensure that every step we take is a step towards a more inclusive future for all. Take your next step and be you, with us! 

Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada:

When available, the salary range posted for this position reflects the projected hiring range for new hire, full-time salaries in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including equity or benefits. For non-sales roles the hiring ranges reflect base salary only; employees are also eligible to receive annual bonuses. Hiring ranges for sales positions include base and incentive compensation target. Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location and additional factors, including but not limited to skillset, experience, and relevant education, certifications, or training. Applicants may not be eligible for the full salary range based on their U.S. or Canada hiring location. The recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees have access to quality medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance and numerous wellbeing offerings.

Employees receive up to twelve paid holidays per calendar year, which includes one floating holiday (for non-exempt employees), plus a day off for their birthday. Non-Exempt new hires accrue up to 16 days of vacation time off each year, at a rate of 4.92 hours per pay period. Exempt new hires participate in Cisco’s flexible Vacation Time Off policy, which does not place a defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use, but is subject to availability and some business limitations. All new hires are eligible for Sick Time Off subject to Cisco’s Sick Time Off Policy and will have eighty (80) hours of sick time off provided on their hire date and on January 1st of each year thereafter.  Up to 80 hours of unused sick time will be carried forward from one calendar year to the next such that the maximum number of sick time hours an employee may have available is 160 hours. Employees in Illinois have a unique time off program designed specifically with local requirements in mind. All employees also have access to paid time away to deal with critical or emergency issues. We offer additional paid time to volunteer and give back to the community.

Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components. For quota-based incentive pay, Cisco typically pays as follows:

.75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;

1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;

1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.

For non-quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.

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