Applications Development Engineer

To make electronics, you need chips, wafers, transistors, reticles, and... To make these, you must see, test and manufacture them at scale—faster and better than ever before. That's where KLA comes in. Whether you're early in your career or an experienced professional, you'll solve complex challenges, work alongside brilliant minds and help shape the future of technology.

Group/Division The Semiconductor Products and Customers (Semi PC) business unit designs, builds and sells KLA’s product portfolio to help chip manufacturers meet high-quality standards for technologies like AI, data centers, automotive and electronic devices. Our inspection, metrology, and analytics systems detect and monitor defects across logic and memory chips, specialty semiconductors, wafers, reticles, advanced packaging, process equipment and materials. We also develop technologies for specialty processes, IC substrates, and PCB manufacturing, including etch and deposition, component inspection, and imaging and analytics.

The Film and Scatterometry Technology (FaST) division delivers industry-leading metrology solutions essential to advanced semiconductor manufacturing. Its portfolio includes systems for measuring film thickness, critical dimensions, composition, and resistivity—key to developing and scaling next-gen IC processes. FaST partners closely with customers from early R&D through high-volume production, ensuring performance and process alignment.

What You'll DoIn this role, you will play a key part in advancing business priorities by delivering high-impact work across your area of expertise.
1. Customer Engagement & Technical Support
- Act as a primary technical contact for customers on TP (Thermal Probe) applications.

- Support tool installation, qualification, and production ramp at customer sites.

- Work closely with customers to understand process challenges and provide optimized metrology solutions.

- Deliver timely troubleshooting and resolution for application-related issues.

- 30% domestic and international travel would be required
2. Application Development
- Develop and optimize recipes for optical metrology
- Perform model setup and refinement
- Ensure measurement accuracy, repeatability, and correlation to customer reference methods.

- Support both inline process control and offline characterization use cases.
3. Demo & Evaluation Execution
- Execute customer demos, evaluations, and acceptance tests (e.g., Tier-2).

- Prepare and analyze data to demonstrate tool capability and application performance.

- Drive spec closure and meet customer requirements within defined timelines.

- Improve demo efficiency, throughput, and cycle time.
4. Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Work closely with product engineering and R&D teams to report issues and drive improvements.

- Provide feedback on application gaps, customer needs, and competitive insights.

- Collaborate with field service engineers to ensure tool performance and uptime.

- Align with global application teams to leverage best practices.

Minimum Qualifications Education & Experience Master’s or PhD in Materials Science, Physics, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
3–8+ years of experience in semiconductor applications, metrology, or process engineering.

Technical Skills Knowledge of:

Thermal probe technology

Optical metrology

Thermal probe characterization and modeling

Semiconductor process integration (logic, memory, or packaging)
Strong data analysis and problem-solving skills.

Soft Skills Strong customer-facing communication skills.

Ability to work independently and in cross-functional teams.

Detail-oriented with strong execution capability.

Fast learner with adaptability in a dynamic environment

Preferred Qualifications Hands-on experience with thermal probe or…