Customer Quality Engineer (CQE) - Early Career (Data & AI Focus)

About our group:

As a Customer Quality Engineer (CQE) in the US Design Center, you will play a critical role in delivering excellent Total Customer Experience by managing customer quality across qualification, pilot, and sustaining phases.

This is a customer‑facing CQE role supporting OEM, Cloud, and Channel customers. The role focuses on external‑facing quality analysis, customer communication, readiness documentation, and cross‑functional coordination, partnering closely with Design, Reliability, Factory Engineering, and Customer teams.

In addition to core CQE responsibilities, this role emphasizes data‑driven decision making and responsible use of AI to improve speed, consistency, and insight in quality workflows.

About the role - you will:

Core Customer CQE Responsibilities:

• Support customer qualification readiness and execution across Pilot and RTS phases, including execution tracking and status reporting.
• Track and communicate qualification and field Failure Analysis (FA) status, priorities, and turnaround time with worldwide FA teams; maintain FA trackers and customer‑facing artifacts (data packages, summaries, status updates).
• Lead and author customer corrective action responses (8D or customer‑required formats), coordinating cross‑functional teams (Design Center, Released Product Teams, Reliability, Factory Engineering) through closure.
• Develop customer communication packages that clearly articulate issue description, impact assessment, containment, risk evaluation, and action plans; maintain action trackers through closure.
• Drive closure discipline and institutional learning, ensuring customer issues are properly linked to required tracking artifacts (e.g., JIRA, RQC, lessons learned) to prevent recurrence.

Data & AI‑Enabled CQE Responsibilities:

• Build and maintain analytics pipelines for quality signals (qualification logs, FA outputs, reliability metrics, integration/field data, and customer telemetry) to identify trends, outliers, and emerging risks.
• Create lightweight automation and tools (Python, SQL, dashboards) to reduce manual effort in recurring CQE workflows such as log parsing, data preparation, reporting, and action tracking.
• Apply statistical reasoning to support reliability and quality narratives, including trend analysis, failure‑rate concepts, confidence in conclusions, and appropriate handling of small or incomplete data sets.
• Use Generative AI responsibly to accelerate CQE work products (e.g., drafting technical summaries, synthesizing FA findings, proposing next‑step experiments, generating first‑pass 8D content), while validating outputs against source data and complying with data classification and IP protection rules.
• Partner with senior CQEs to improve clarity, rigor, and defensibility of customer‑facing quality communications using data‑backed insight.

Standards, Process Rigor, and Best Practices:

• Apply structured problem‑solving methodologies (8D, closed‑loop corrective action discipline, root cause analysis) and support issue tracking through verified closure.
• Develop working knowledge of enterprise storage qualification expectations, endurance and reliability definitions, and how test results translate to customer risk.
• Perform and validate log and telemetry analysis using approved internal tools; ensure supporting evidence is properly captured and linked in tracking systems for cross‑team visibility.
• Demonstrate strong data stewardship, documentation discipline, and audit readiness in all customer‑facing quality activities.

About you:

• Motivated self‑starter with strong ownership, attention to detail, and ability to operate effectively in customer‑facing technical situations.
• Strong written and verbal communicator who can explain complex technical and quality topics clearly to both internal teams and external customers.
• Data‑first mindset: comfortable working with messy, high‑volume datasets and challenging conclusions until evidence supports them.
• Able to communicate uncertainty, assumptions, and confidence in conclusions—not just outcomes.
• Practical and responsible AI user who understands the importance of validation, data governance, and IP protection

Your experience includes:

• Coursework or academic projects demonstrating data analysis, programming (Python preferred), and applied statistics.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills suitable for customer‑facing technical work.
• BS in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Data Science, Industrial Engineering, or a related field.

You may also have:

• Exposure to storage technologies (HDD concepts), reliability engineering, quality engineering, or manufacturing/test environments.
• Experience with SQL and data visualization tools (Tableau, Power BI) and/or handling large log or telemetry‑style datasets.
• Coursework or projects involving Design of Experiments (DOE), ANOVA, hypothesis testing, or statistical process control.
• Familiarity with time‑series analysis or statistical monitoring applied to quality or reliability data.
• Understanding of causal reasoning (correlation vs. causation, bias, confounding) to avoid incorrect attribution in failure analysis.
• Exposure to uncertainty quantification or probabilistic reasoning in engineering or data science contexts.
• Interest in predictive quality, anomaly detection, and AI‑assisted quality workflows.

Location:

Shakopee, MN or Longmont, CO

Our Shakopee campus is located 25 minutes southwest of Minneapolis in a setting with a rural vibe – it overlooks a horse racing track and stables, yet it has great entertainment venues close by as well. With wide-open spaces, the campus has plenty of space for running, biking, shooting some hoops or playing volleyball over lunch. If working out is your thing, the on-site fully equipped fitness center hosts wellness programs, tournaments and group workouts. Hungry? Seagate offers an on-site café with freshly sourced foods and specialty coffees, or if you prefer, drive to one of many restaurants just minutes away.

Our Longmont product-design campus is nestled against the foothills with exceptional views of the Rocky Mountains. Here at work, you can grab breakfast and lunch in the on-site cafeteria or get an afternoon espresso, prepared by a professional barista. Our 1,500+ employees enjoy an active on-site experience from sporting activities (get in a few laps at lunch on our 1-mile walking path around campus, play ping-pong or volleyball, or stop in our 24- hour fitness center for a group or individual workout) to community service and many employee resource groups.

The estimated base salary range for this position is $53,830 - $76,992. The individual salary is based on work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. 

Seagate offers comprehensive benefits to its eligible employees, including, but not limited to, , eligibility to participate in discretionary bonus program, medical, dental, vision, and life insurance, short-and long-term disability, 401(k), employee stock purchase plan, health savings account, dependent care, and healthcare spending accounts. Seagate also offers paid time off, including 12 holidays, flexible time off provided pursuant to Seagate policy, a minimum of 48 hours of paid sick leave, and 16 weeks of paid parental leave. The benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year and may differ depending on work location. 

Location: Shakopee, United States, Longmont, United States
Travel: None