Her Story
About Namitha
Namitha Somasundaram is a Product Engineering Execution Manager at Micron Technology Inc. with more than a decade of experience in the semiconductor industry, specializing in AI hardware, compute memory, and DRAM product engineering. She leads end-to-end execution of advanced semiconductor products, partnering with globally distributed engineering, quality, manufacturing, supply chain, and business teams to deliver next-generation memory technologies that power AI and high-performance computing applications. Her expertise spans engineering product management, new product introduction (NPI), semiconductor design verification, stakeholder management, and cross-functional product execution. Prior to joining Micron, Namitha spent more than six years at Intel Corporation, where she held progressively responsible engineering roles across analog mixed-signal verification, digital verification, and SoC design. Her contributions included enabling one of the first 5G calls in China, advancing DDR memory controller technologies, and supporting critical persistent memory products. She holds a Masters degree in Computer Engineering from Virginia Tech and a Bachelor of Technology in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology and Research Academy (SASTRA University). Throughout her career, she has been recognized for driving innovation, including leading an EUV qualification initiative that generated multi-million $$ in cost savings and contributing to multiple patent applications. Beyond her technical leadership, Namitha is a passionate advocate for mentorship, STEM education, and leadership development. She serves as a mentor with ADPList, volunteers extensively with Society of Women Engineers, FIRST Tech Challenge, and numerous STEM outreach initiatives that encourage future engineers to pursue careers in technology. She is committed to helping others build confidence, strengthen communication skills, and navigate career transitions while championing diversity, innovation, and lifelong learning across the global engineering community.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Namitha
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to being constantly curious and consistently showing up for new challenges, like saying Yes to the Women Innovators program at Micron even after initial rejection. By embracing innovation and supporting women innovators, I gained incredible experiences I never anticipated such as filing patents and presenting in Technical Leadership seminar. Remaining open-minded and adaptable has allowed me to seize unexpected prospects that shaped my journey.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I received was from one of my managers when I was new to the industry: build a T-shaped skillset. She suggested going deep in one domain but also building knowledge of the adjacencies around it. I sought out opportunities to build that T: analog to digital verification to design to engineering product management, all orbiting memory. A decade in, the vertical bar of the T is a credential. The horizontal bar is the actual job.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My advice to young women entering the industry is to be bold, dream big, and always bet on yourself. Based on my experience with my Bachelor's capstone project in Barcelona, choosing the option to bet on myself pushed me out of my comfort zone. It opened doors in ways I did not expect, like leading to my first job at Intel. It is time to prove to yourself what you are capable of.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
We are in one of the most exciting times for the semiconductor industry. We are at a perfect confluence of compute horsepower and AI innovation supercycle. Innovation and solutions come when you reach across domains and start to understand from a system perspective how your role fits in. For example, understanding the data center system power constraints and how that impacts your component design. By connecting system level demands to component innovation, we can shape the next era of high performance computing.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The value most important to me is having a growth mindset. The skills that got me from one step to the next were not always the skills that got me to where I wanted to go. I rebuilt my skills and adjacent knowledge through my multiple transitions from analog mixed signal verification to digital verification to digital design to engineering product management to, more recently, working on a new industry standard introduction, and every one of those transitions was the right thing for me. I have come to enjoy riding the learning curve.
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