Senior Applications Engineer
About the role
The Senior Applications Engineer is responsible for leading the development, validation, and deployment of advanced inspection solutions across Onto Innovation’s inspection product portfolio. Serving as a key technical leader within the Product Lifecycle (PLC) Applications Development organization, this role drives product readiness, application innovation, customer adoption, and technology commercialization. The successful candidate will work closely with Product Development, Systems Engineering, Software, Algorithms, Product Management, Marketing, and Customer-facing organizations to transform emerging technologies into scalable, production-ready customer solutions. This position plays a critical role in New Product Introduction (NPI), strategic customer engagements, application development, competitive benchmarking, and roadmap validation across wafer inspection, advanced packaging, and semiconductor manufacturing applications. This role operates in a highly collaborative, multinational environment, partnering with engineering teams, field organizations, and customers across North America, Asia, and Europe. The successful candidate must be comfortable working across diverse cultures, time zones, and business environments while supporting global product deployment, customer evaluations, product demonstrations, and strategic business initiatives. The position requires domestic and international travel of up to 30%.
Responsibilities
- Application Development & Technical Leadership – Lead development and optimization of advanced inspection recipes for defect detection, classification, process monitoring, and yield improvement applications. Design customer-focused workflows that demonstrate product differentiation, manufacturing relevance, and business value. Establish and validate Best Known Methods (BKMs) for global deployment across multiple inspection platforms. Drive application strategies supporting wafer inspection, advanced packaging, heterogeneous integration, and emerging semiconductor technologies. Provide technical leadership and mentorship to junior engineers and cross-functional project teams.
- Product Validation & New Product Introduction (NPI) – Lead application characterization, benchmarking, and qualification activities for new products and roadmap technologies. Develop and execute comprehensive validation plans covering sensitivity, accuracy, throughput, nuisance rate, repeatability, and production readiness. Define customer-relevant use cases and performance benchmarks for product acceptance. Support release readiness reviews and ensure successful product deployment. Partner with