1. Dhankaran Singh Ajravat
Email: dhankaran.aj@gmail.com Cell: 408-835-5844
Progressive, innovative and result driven Product & Test Engineering Professional with 7 years wide spread
experience in system level test for enterprise and consumer SSD’s (SATA, SAS and PCIe), debug, failure analysis and
implementation of cost effective technical solutions.
Strong understanding of defects and defect management at system level and highly focused, motivated and adept
in issue analysis/root cause deep dive and driving corrective actions in a high paced production environment.
Proven track record of adapting and adjusting to deliver time critical and high revenue company projects on both
product level (SAS, SATA: 2013-present) and component level (MTCT, PPN: 2009).
Demonstrated strong team player and leadership abilities with effective result oriented communication skills and
talent to train, motivate, and mentor successful global teams.
Technical Skills:
Expert on test flow setup and methodologies for ESS SSD products focusing on optimizing test time, yields and
reducing DPPM.
Hands on working experience in various test platforms and test protocols (SATA, PCIe, eMMC, USB2.0, SD).
Proficient on NAND Device technology understanding, with strong NAND failure analysis skills at system level,
providing analysis on failure root cause and delivering end solutions.
Strong background in programming languages (C, C++,Python, etc.) to create product test programs used in
manufacturing and design parsers for faster log analysis.
Professional Experience
Staff Product Development Engineer (SanDisk Corp.) Aug 2014- Present
Role: Product development lead - Enterprise Solid State Drives (SATA)
Lead test flow development, yield enhancement and failure mode analysis on 2 key revenue products.
Responsible to close tier 1 client issues, validate firmware components and modules, interface with FW (SATA,
FTL), hardware and system engineering teams to meet CS and ramp up timelines.
Proactively working with global FW development teams to provide requirements and test scenarios for drive
selftest to reduce insertion (cost reduction) and test time. Proposal implemented in factory as final solution.
Closing loop with component (NAND, DRAM, etc.) test and device teams to close top issues to enhance drive
level yields, reduce issue turn-around time.
Working with ESS tester hardware suppliers, participated in schematic and specification reviews to resolve
tester related bugs, etc.
Demonstrating high energy handing multiple projects in parallel.
Role: Product development lead – Consumer Solid State Drives (SATA, PCIe) Feb 2014 - Aug 2014
Develop device selftest strategy and design scripts with FW modules to optimize test flows and reduce test
times.
Lead failure analysis automation tool development with in-line failure mode analysis to capture real time
failure symptoms, determine failure mode types, define pareto and design evaluations to address critical
concerns.
Lead global teams in failure analysis to close high priority failure modes and achieve yield and DPPM targets to
ship.
Integrating drive and component production/manufacturing teams to define key deliverables and reduce turn-
around time for critical production failures (line stops) and customer returns.

2. Sr. Product Development Engineer, (SanDisk Corp.) Oct 2012 - Oct 2013
Role: Product Development lead - Enterprise Solid State Drive (SAS):
Technical lead for test program development, yield enhancement and customer quality for enterprise grade
SSD drives using 2x/1x NAND Flash memory for PCIe and SAS solutions.
Drive and manage product qualification, ramp up and sustain production, coordinating efforts with the
operations, FW, Test engineering and quality teams.
Driving Customer FW checkout and release process. Working with FWQA engineers on feature request,
implementation, checkout and lead timely production release.
Recognized for improving ESS product yields from low 20% to 97% final yields in a span of 5 months to meeting
customer targets.
Responsibilities include defining test flow, setting screen limits per spec, meeting internal ES/CS yield/quality
targets and meet LV and HV DPPM/yield/TT metrics.
Statistical analysis on high volume data sets for yield and DPPM assessment and improvement on production
and client side failures - deep dive and root cause problem solving with design of experiment and implement
corrective and prevention tests/processes.
Lead cost analysis, software test requirements and development of company’s first 500TB product. Acquired
deeper understanding of bus expanders, tester components (motherboard, controller, DRAM, etc.) and their
compatibility, S/W GUI designs, etc.
Product Development Engineer-II (SanDisk Corp.): July 2008 – Oct 2012
Role NAND Product Development Engineer (NAND: 56nm, 43nm, 32nm, 24nm, 19nm, 1Y, 1Z nodes)
Recognized for development and test for industry leading single insertion MTCT solution for memory testing
through ASIC, this resulted in $25Million in annual cost savings to the company.
Develop NAND test screen and stresses and drive test program updates in factory to enhance drive yields.
Exposure to ATE platforms for high volume component level testing.
Work with global teams to discuss failure root causes and drive efforts to implement solutions scripts at wafer
level.
Enhance and optimize tests for different NAND masks and memory revisions. Interface with design, device and
systems engineering.
Test time reduction projects with production to provide real time cost savings by TTR projects at various NAND
stages.
Enhancing coding skills in python, perl and other scripting languages to automate manual process to save time
and increase throughput.
Educational Qualifications
Masters in Electrical and Computer Science Engineering ( Sept. 2006 – Aug 2007) Rochester Institute of
Technology, Rochester, NY, (Aug 2007-May 2008), and Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, MI. (GPA
3.87)
Ongoing continuing education initiatives like advanced python and C# for GUI design.