Position SummaryThe Equipment Maintenance Engineer supports the reliability, performance, and lifecycle needs of equipment used in precision optical fabrication, cleaning, metrology, and thin-film coating. This hands-on engineering role troubleshoots equipment issues, develops and improves maintenance activities, supports installations and upgrades, and participates in root-cause investigations.
The Equipment Engineer works with Production, Process Engineering, Quality, Maintenance, Environmental Health and Safety, Facilities, and equipment vendors to improve equipment availability, process stability, product quality, safety, and throughput. Process Engineering retains responsibility for approved fabrication parameters and coating recipes. The Equipment Engineer supports equipment capability, condition, maintainability, and return-to-service activities within established procedures and engineering practices.
Key Responsibilities - Serve as a technical resource for optical fabrication and thin-film coating equipment.
- Support CNC optical generators, grinders, mills, lapping and polishing machines, centering and edging equipment, MRF systems, precision cleaning systems, slurry and filtration systems, robotics, automation, and metrology-support equipment.
- Support e-beam evaporation, thermal evaporation, sputtering, ion-assisted deposition, plasma, and other vacuum-deposition systems.
- Maintain and troubleshoot vacuum chambers, pumps, valves, seals, feedthroughs, gauges, leak-detection systems, power supplies, electron guns, ion sources, substrate heaters, motion systems, mass-flow controllers, process-gas systems, thickness monitors, chillers, and cooling-water systems.
- Diagnose mechanical, electrical, electronic, pneumatic, hydraulic, vacuum, thermal, PLC, servo, VFD, high-voltage, and motion-control failures using established troubleshooting methods.
- Support equipment recovery, vacuum leak diagnosis, contamination response, chamber maintenance, repairs, shutdown activities, and recurring-failure investigations.
- Develop and refine preventive and predictive maintenance activities using equipment criticality, OEM recommendations, failure history, condition data, and process risk.
- Participate in root-cause analysis for downtime, repeat failures, maintenance-related defects, contamination events, vacuum instability, and equipment-related quality issues.
- Design and implement equipment modifications within assigned scope and review requirements to improve reliability, maintainability, safety, cleanliness, process capability, and cycle time.
- Support equipment installations, relocations, upgrades, refurbishments, commissioning, and decommissioning.
- Contribute to equipment specifications, design reviews, factory acceptance testing, site acceptance testing, and capital-equipment evaluations.
- Analyze equipment performance data and recommend actions based on uptime, failure trends, maintenance cost, process variation, and lifecycle risk.
- Create and maintain CMMS asset records, preventive-maintenance plans, equipment history, failure codes, bills of materials, spare-parts requirements, and technical procedures.
- Maintain accurate electrical schematics, mechanical drawings, P&IDs, software and parameter backups, equipment manuals, and service records.
- Support equipment return to production following repairs or modifications, including cleaning, leak checks, functional testing, calibration coordination, and production verification.
- Provide technical support and training to maintenance technicians and equipment operators within the employee's area of knowledge.
- Coordinate with OEM service providers, contractors, and repair vendors, and support spare-parts planning.
- Follow requirements for lockout/tagout, electrical and high-voltage safety, machine guarding, stored-energy control, compressed-gas safety, chemical handling, and cleanroom operations.
Required Qualifications - Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Mechatronics, Manufacturing, Industrial Engineering, or a related technical field. Equivalent technical education and relevant equipment experience may be considered.
- Two or more years of equipment engineering, maintenance engineering, or hands-on equipment support experience in precision or high-technology manufacturing.
- Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot automated equipment involving mechanical, electrical, controls, vacuum, and thermal systems.
- Experience with high-vacuum pumps, valves, gauges, seals, leak diagnosis, cooling systems, and vacuum-system cleanliness.
- Ability to read, interpret, and update electrical schematics, mechanical drawings, pneumatic diagrams, P&IDs, and technical procedures.
- Experience with CMMS systems, preventive maintenance, root-cause analysis, equipment upgrades, and assigned project work.
- Strong analytical, documentation, communication, coordination, and structured problem-solving skills.
Preferred Qualifications - Experience in precision optics, optical coating, photonics, semiconductor, aerospace, medical-device, or similarly controlled manufacturing.
- Experience with optical grinding, polishing, centering, MRF, CNC glass machining, precision cleaning, or metrology equipment.
- Experience with e-beam evaporation, sputtering, ion-assisted deposition, process-gas control, cryogenic systems, or vacuum leak detection.
- Familiarity with PLCs, robotics, machine vision, industrial networks, chillers, cleanroom HVAC, compressed air, and deionized-water systems.
- Knowledge of Lean manufacturing, TPM, FMEA, CAPA, reliability-centered maintenance, ISO 9001, AS9100, or ISO 13485.
Success Measures Equipment availability and reliability; preventive-maintenance effectiveness; reduced downtime and repeat failures; equipment-related quality performance; timely completion of assigned projects and improvements; process capability support; safety compliance; documentation accuracy; maintenance-cost awareness; and effective technical knowledge sharing.
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