Job Description

As a Principal Standards Engineer for SSD Industry Standards, you will have the opportunity to join a team dedicated to leading the development of globally adopted industry specifications for interoperable, cutting-edge features in Storage and SSD products. The ideal candidate will play a key role in advancing both KIOXIA’s interests and those of the broader industry by helping define how future products will operate and interact. This position involves monitoring, analyzing, reporting, and creating technical proposals.

The successful candidate will collaborate with international teams across KIOXIA, as well as representatives of customers and of competitors, to align product definition and development with industry standards, and to drive the standardization of KIOXIA’s innovative features and products. The team is responsible for developing specifications that enable unprecedented speeds and capacities, integrate the latest security initiatives, and support use-case optimized form factors and functionalities.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead the definition and execution of KIOXIA’s standardization strategy across Enterprise, Client, and Datacenter storage segments.
• Represent KIOXIA as a principal technical contributor in standards committees, working groups, and technical forums.
• Drive the creation, submission, and advancement of technical proposals within relevant standards bodies.
• Lead internal technical alignment across Engineering, Marketing, and Product teams to ensure standards activities support product roadmaps and customer requirements.
• Analyze and evaluate external technical proposals and guide internal position-setting and response strategies.
• Coordinate with customers, suppliers, ecosystem partners, and even competitors to influence standards direction and drive consensus.
• Maintain ownership of standards documentation, proposal tracking, and internal knowledge sharing.
• Strengthen KIOXIA’s industry visibility and technical leadership through active participation and contribution to standards initiatives.
• Identify emerging standards bodies, technologies, and opportunities for KIOXIA to assume leadership roles.
• Plan and facilitate recurring internal standards review meetings, including agenda setting, decision tracking, and follow-up actions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree and at least 10 years of relevant experience in storage, SSD, or related technologies, including a minimum of 5 years of direct participation in industry standardization initiatives.
• Demonstrated leadership in developing and presenting technical proposals within formal standards organizations, with proven experience representing an organization in external technical or standards forums and managing complex stakeholder interactions.
• Strong analytical skills to assess customer requirements, competitive technologies, and internal engineering constraints to inform standards positions.
• Ability to independently define priorities, develop execution plans, and deliver results with minimal executive oversight; proactive in providing clear and timely updates.
• Competency in coordinating cross-functional teams to resolve technical issues, align on standards-related decisions, and define efficient processes.
• Strong project management skills with the ability to independently prioritize, plan, execute, and deliver multiple initiatives, while providing proactive updates.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with experience presenting complex technical topics to senior technical and business leaders and engaging effectively at all levels of the organization.
• Active participation in standards organizations such as PCI Express, SNIA, DMTF, and NVM Express preferred.
• Familiarity with antitrust and anticompetitive regulations for standardization activities, as well as the penalties for violations.
• Deep understanding of electrical, mechanical, and thermal requirements for advanced storage devices preferred.
• Familiarity with storage architectures across client, server, enterprise, and datacenter environments preferred.
• Working knowledge of SSD architecture and system I/O stacks preferred.

Additional Information

Req# 2236; #LI-CB1;

The expected salary for this position is $155,420.00 - 259,030.00.

At KIOXIA, we value the following:

• Investment in you
  • Offering opportunities for career growth and personal development training
• Open-minded management
  • Empowering employees by listening and responding to ideas, issues, and approaches
• Flexible work-life balance
  • Offering a generous PTO allotment, holiday shutdown, and flexible work options
• Diversity of cultures, perspectives, backgrounds and experiences of all our team members
  • Through our diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, our focus is to strengthen our company culture to create more inclusion and belonging for all
• Benefits for our team members
  • Excellent medical and non-medical benefits, 401(k) matching, pet insurance

KIOXIA America, Inc. provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.