Senior Applications Engineer

Department: Sales & Business Development. Location: Austin, TX or Fremont, CA (Preferred) or Remote (U.S.) with ability to travel.

About the role

Our Client is a leading supplier of advanced wafer probe card solutions for the semiconductor industry. We are seeking an experienced Senior Applications Engineer to join our Sales organization and provide technical leadership throughout the customer engagement process. This customer-facing position supports both pre-sales and post-sales activities, serving as the technical liaison between customers, Sales, Engineering, and Manufacturing. The successful candidate will evaluate customer device requirements, recommend technical solutions, support new product development, perform hands-on probe card evaluation and troubleshooting, and travel to customer sites to ensure successful implementation and qualification of Our Client's products.

Responsibilities

• Partner with the Sales team to identify customer technical requirements and recommend the optimum probe card solution.
• Participate in customer meetings, technical presentations, design reviews, and product demonstrations.
• Review customer device information including wafer layouts, pad metallurgy, pad dimensions, pad pitch, probe mark specifications, touchdown requirements, and electrical test requirements.
• Provide technical input for feasibility, quotations, proposals, statements of work, and new order kick-off meetings.
• Support customer evaluations, proof-of-concept projects, and new business opportunities.
• Lead customer installation, qualification, optimization, and acceptance of Our Client's probe card products.
• Troubleshoot probe card performance issues including probe replacement, alignment, planarity, probe marks, continuity, yield loss, and electrical contact performance.
• Perform root cause analysis and coordinate corrective actions with Engineering and Manufacturing.
• Support customer production ramps and ensure successful transition into high-volume manufacturing.
• Provide technical training and application support to customer engineering and production teams.
• Maintain long-term customer relationships by providing responsive technical support and continuous improvement recommendations.
• Serve as the primary technical interface between customers and Our Client throughout the product lifecycle.
• Work closely with Design Engineering to develop probe card solutions that meet customer specifications and performance requirements.
• Interface with Manufacturing to ensure products are built to specification and delivered on schedule.
• Participate in design reviews, manufacturability assessments, engineering change orders (ECOs), and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Analyze probe marks, planarity, overtravel, scrub length, alignment accuracy, and overall probe card performance.
• Prepare technical reports, qualification summaries, failure analyses, and customer presentations.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, or a related technical discipline (or equivalent industry experience).
• Minimum 5 years of experience in semiconductor wafer probe, probe cards, wafer test, ATE, semiconductor equipment, or semiconductor manufacturing.
• Strong understanding of semiconductor wafer probing and probe card technologies.
• Experience interpreting customer wafer drawings, device layouts, and technical specifications.
• Hands-on experience with probe card setup, qualification, troubleshooting, mechanical measurements, and probe mark analysis.
• Ability to communicate effectively with customers, Sales, Engineering, and Manufacturing teams.
• Strong presentation, organizational, and project management skills.
• Self-motivated with the ability to manage multiple customer projects simultaneously.
• Willingness to travel approximately 30-50%, including domestic and international travel.

Qualifications

• Experience with MEMS, Vertical, Cantilever, probe card technologies along with a variety of Space Transformer and PCB solutions.
• Experience supporting Advantest, Teradyne, Cohu, or other semiconductor ATE platforms.
• Experience with probe card analyzers, planarity measurement systems, and semiconductor failure analysis techniques.
• Knowledge of semiconductor wafer fabrication, device characterization, and production test methodologies.

Skills

• Strong customer-facing and relationship-building skills.
• Ability to bridge technical engineering discussions with commercial sales objectives.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving abilities.
• Comfortable working independently at customer sites worldwide.