Job Description & Details
This is a hands-on hardware failure analysis role where you will be knee-deep in debugging complex networking gear for a major tech player's switching and routing product lines. If you enjoy oscilloscope screen time, chasing signal integrity issues, and dissecting physical boards down to the component level, this contract gives you a front-row seat to heavy-duty enterprise hardware.
What You'll Actually Be Doing
Expect to spend your days troubleshooting tricky board-level faults, debugging high-speed digital designs, and figuring out why hardware prototypes aren't behaving under stress. You'll be using lab bench heavy-hitters like oscilloscopes and traffic generators to isolate complex signal failures on custom switching hardware. When something flakes out in the lab, you are the one expected to trace the issue back to the silicon, schematic, or trace layer.
The Core Tech Stack
You need a solid foundation in electrical engineering with at least six years of hands-on experience in board-level circuit design and failure analysis. Deep familiarity with high-speed SerDes and serial transmission technologies is non-negotiable because you're dealing with massive bandwidth gear. You should also be completely comfortable driving lab equipment like logic analyzers and traffic generators like Ixia or Spirent, while knowing your way around control interfaces like PCIe, MDIO, SPI, and I2C.
Interview Expectations
Expect the hiring team to slide a schematic or a real-world failure waveform in front of you and ask you to walk them through your isolation methodology step-by-step. They are secretly looking to see how systematically you think when faced with intermittent hardware faults rather than just guessing random components. Be ready to explain a time you troubleshooted a high-speed signal integrity issue using an oscilloscope and how you ruled out variables under pressure.
Application Advice
Your resume needs to skip the generic buzzwords and put your lab bench war stories right at the top. Make sure exact keywords like "SerDes", "failure analysis", "oscilloscope", and control interfaces like "PCIe" and "I2C" are explicitly visible so you easily clear the initial ATS parsing. Highlight specific hardware platforms or complex boards you've debugged in the past to prove you can hit the ground running on day one.