Onto Innovation is seeking an Applications Development Engineer focused on developing and deploying inspection solutions for advanced semiconductor and electronics manufacturing. This role is part of the Applications Engineering organization and works closely with Algorithms, Optics, Systems, Software, and Product teams to translate core technology capabilities into production-ready solutions.

This position bridges product development and customer-facing applications, ensuring inspection tools deliver high sensitivity, accuracy, and throughput while meeting real-world manufacturing requirements. You will drive application readiness,validateperformance, and enable scalable deployment of inspection solutions across wafer, substrate, and advanced packaging applications.

This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy working at the intersection of hardware, algorithms, and customer applications, and who want to make a direct impact on yield improvement and product adoption.

Key Responsibilities 

Application Development & Optimization 

• Develop and optimize inspection recipes for defect detection, classification, and measurement across wafers, substrates, and advanced packaging applications. 

• Characterize tool performance including sensitivity, accuracy, throughput (WPH), and repeatability. 

• Drive application readiness for New Product Introduction (NPI) and roadmap tools, ensuring solutions meet production deployment requirements. 

• Develop test plans, benchmarking methodologies, and validation strategies to ensure robust application performance. 

Algorithms & Data-Driven Inspection 

• Collaborate with ML/algorithm teams to develop and validate defect detection and classification (ADC) solutions. 

• Contribute to dataset generation, labeling, training workflows, and performance benchmarking. 

• Support deployment of AI-driven inspection techniques and multi-channel imaging approaches. 

• Analyze large customer datasets to extract actionable insights for yield improvement and process control. 

System Integration & Performance Optimization 

• Partner with systems, optics, and software engineering teams to optimize end-to-end system performance. 

• Debug complex interactions across image acquisition, illumination, motion control, and compute pipelines. 

• Drive improvements in tool stability, usability, throughput, and overall system robustness.

Customer Engagement & Application Deployment

• Interface directly with customers to understand process challenges and translate them into effective inspection solutions.

• Support customer demos, head-to-head evaluations, beta programs, and field escalations.

• Provide applicationexpertiseto enable successful tool adoption and performance validation in manufacturing environments.

Product & Technology Development Support

• Provide structured feedback to R&D and Product Management to influence product specifications, PRDs, and roadmap direction.

• Contribute to definition of application requirements for next-generation inspection technologies.

• Develop application notes, best practices, and standardized workflows for global deployment.

• Support training and knowledge transfer for internal teams and customers.

Lifecycle Support

• Support products across the full lifecycle, including NPI characterization, field deployment, and escalation resolution.

• Travelapproximately30–40% (domestic and international)to support customer engagements, tool installations, and critical issue resolution.