Principal Systems Software Engineer, Semiconductor Systems Inspection
$272k - $431k • US, CA, Santa Clara
Posted 1mo ago
Job Location
US, CA, Santa Clara
Tech Stack
Remote Work Policy
On-site
Categories
Machine Learning Engineer
About the job
NVIDIA is seeking a Principal Systems Software Engineer for Semiconductor Inspection to join their team in Santa Clara. This role involves defining, building, and evaluating AI systems for semiconductor manufacturing, focusing on inspection and metrology. The work spans computer vision, time-series modeling, multimodal AI, and anomaly detection, with a strong emphasis on adapting and deploying these technologies within partner environments. The goal is to create integrated, reliable, and fast AI solutions that can be operated by fabs and equipment vendors, even in air-gapped facilities with limited data and tight production budgets.
Responsibilities
- Define and prototype AI system architectures for semiconductor inspection, metrology, and manufacturing data.
- Advance foundation model capabilities for semiconductor manufacturing, including vision, time-series, and multimodal learning.
- Develop workflows for defect detection, classification, localization, segmentation, and anomaly detection.
- Establish evaluation methods to measure model quality and robustness under domain shifts.
- Design fab-local evaluation and adaptation workflows that preserve data sovereignty.
- Connect inspection and metrology results with equipment signals and process data for manufacturing-wide reasoning.
- Design agentic workflows for air-gapped fabs to automate data triage, model inference, and root-cause analysis.
- Optimize and package inference capabilities for production latency, memory, throughput, reliability, and security.
- Collaborate with internal teams and external partners to move capabilities from prototype to production.
- Work directly with fabs and equipment manufacturers to integrate and deploy AI capabilities.
Requirements
- MS or PhD in a relevant technical field, or equivalent experience.
- 12+ years of professional software or algorithm engineering experience, with demonstrated technical ownership and architectural direction.
- 8+ years in semiconductor manufacturing, including inspection, metrology, or process control.
- Hands-on delivery of software that shipped in semiconductor equipment, operated in a fab, or was adopted by a manufacturing customer.
- 4+ years of hands-on deep learning, machine learning, computer vision, or applied AI experience within the last 24 months.
- Strong Python skills and production experience with PyTorch or TensorFlow.
- Proven ability to take ambiguous technical problems through architecture, implementation, evaluation, and validated results.
- Working GPU literacy, including reasoning about inference performance and hardware/software bottlenecks.
- Direct engagement with fabs, manufacturing teams, or equipment vendors on technical requirements.
- Strong analytical, communication, and cross-functional leadership skills.
Benefits
- Competitive salaries
- Generous benefits package
- Equity