Sr. Mechanical Design Engineer, Precision Motion Stages

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.

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.

KLA's Central Engineering organization is made up of nine Centers of Excellence (CoEs) spanning disciplines like automation, motion control, sensors, platform design, and packaging. Each CoE contributes not only technical deliverables but also deep expertise, best practices, and advanced tools that elevate both what we build—and how we build it.

In this role, you will play a key part in advancing business priorities by delivering high-impact work across your area of expertise.

The Central Engineering Team seeks a Senior Mechanical Engineer to design a next-generation stage design for high-vacuum platforms, meeting demanding ultra-precision and noise-control requirements! As a senior engineer, you will drive stage mechanical design from concept through validation and sustaining, partnering closely with controls, systems, and manufacturing teams to deliver nanometer-level accuracy and stability. If you are energized by solving hard precision- and vacuum-engineering problems for mission-critical semiconductor inspection equipment, we would like to hear from you!

• Design, develop, and maintain the mechanical architecture of next-generation multi-DOF ultra-precision motion stages that operate under high vacuum for eBeam inspection and review, taking the work from concept through detailed design, prototyping, and validation to meet nanometer-level accuracy, stability, and noise-control targets, including:
  Multi-degree-of-freedom stage structures, flexures, and precision motion mechanisms.
• Vacuum- and UHV-compatible materials and hardware with low-out gassing, contamination-controlled design.
• Bearing, guide, and actuation selection such as air bearings, linear guides, and linear motors.
• Metrology and feedback integration, including laser interferometers and high-resolution encoders.
• Thermal management and drift compensation for stable, repeatable positioning.
• Structural dynamics, damping, and vibration/noise isolation.
• Design parts and assemblies in Creo/Solid Works and generate detailed drawings with GD&T, driving rigorous design-review and release discipline from requirements definition through validation and qualification.
• Perform structural, thermal, and vibration/modal FEA and tolerance stack-up analysis to optimize stiffness, damping, accuracy, and manufacturability, and build, test, and troubleshoot prototypes — including modal testing with accelerometers and impact hammers — to characterize dynamic performance and correlate models against test data.
• Partner closely with controls, systems, and manufacturing engineers to integrate the stage at the subsystem and system level and to improve performance, manufacturability, reliability, and…