Physicist​/Scientist V

Who We Are

Applied Materials is a global leader in materials engineering solutions used to produce virtually every new chip and advanced display in the world. We design, build, and service cutting‑edge equipment that helps our customers manufacture display and semiconductor chips – the brains of devices we use every day.

• Salary: $ - $
• Location: Santa Clara, CA

You’ll benefit from a supportive work culture that encourages learning, development, and career growth. We empower our team to push the boundaries of what is possible while learning every day in a leading global company.

Employees enjoy programs and support for personal and professional growth, health, and wellbeing.

• Technically lead and/or execute engineering projects and spearhead research and development of new technologies.
• Define experiments and diagnostics to isolate dominant physical mechanisms in PVD chambers, including plasma behavior, electromagnetic field effects, ionization, sputtering transport, thermal gradients, pressure regimes, and UHV phenomena.
• Determine meaningful data required to distinguish between plasma‑driven, EM‑driven, thermal‑driven, or pressure‑driven effects in complex, coupled chamber environments.
• Lead and/or develop complex system projects; oversee and approve designs in team design reviews.
• Provide physics‑based guidance during chamber, module, and sub‑module design reviews, emphasizing E‑field/B‑field topology, plasma confinement, sputtering efficiency, thermal behavior, and vacuum performance.
• Influence chamber architecture and design rules by identifying physics‑imposed constraints and tradeoffs impacting performance, uniformity, reliability, and scalability.
• Problem‑identify and troubleshoot a wide range of significantly complex issues; oversee and approve research and analysis results.
• Lead root‑cause analysis of complex, cross‑domain chamber behaviors where plasma, electromagnetic, thermal, pressure, and vacuum effects are strongly coupled.
• Diagnose non‑intuitive behaviors such as process drift, uniformity excursions, defect generation, or instability by identifying second‑order physics effects missed by empirical approaches.
• Serve as MDP PVD physics specialist for chamber‑level multiphysics issues, supporting internal product teams and selected customer escalations.
• Communicate complex physics concepts to engineering, management, and customer stakeholders to drive alignment and sound technical decision‑making under ambiguity.
• Apply advanced principles, theories, and concepts in low‑temperature plasma physics, electromagnetics, sputtering physics, and transport phenomena relevant to PVD systems.
• Contribute physics insight to platform and architectural risk assessments, including evaluation of competitor PVD architectures, field configurations, and process entitlements.
• Initiate and lead physics‑driven innovation projects targeting next‑generation PVD performance limits.
• Engage with universities, consortia, and strategic partners on applied plasma, deposition, and chamber physics topics aligned with MDP roadmaps.
• Provide mentoring for less experienced physicist/scientists.
• Research new technologies and analyze competitor technology; plan and execute feasibility studies of new technologies and lead the decision‑making process.
• Lead demonstrations of new capabilities and drive the decision‑making process.
• Mentor engineers and physicists in applying first‑principles, system‑level thinking across coupled plasma, EM, thermal, pressure, and vacuum domains.

• Regarded as the technical expert in their particular field.
• Demonstrates in‑depth or breadth of expertise in own discipline and broad knowledge of other disciplines within the function.

• Anticipates business and regulatory issues; recommends product, process, or service improvements.

• Leads projects with notable risk and complexity; develops the strategy for project execution.

• Solves unique problems with broad impact on the business; requires conceptual and innovative thinking to develop solutions.
• Solves complex problems where multiple physical domains interact and where root causes…