Job Title: Wafer Product Engineer
Location: Ottawa, ON
Position Summary
We are seeking an experienced Wafer Product Engineer to lead characterization, yield analysis, statistical validation, and manufacture readiness for semiconductor products from NPI through high-volume production. As the technical bridge between Design Engineering, Test Engineering, Fabs, OSATs, and Operations, you will define characterization plans, corner-lot strategies, SPC methodologies, and release criteria, using DOE, GRR, Cp/Cpk, correlation analysis, and yield modeling to ensure products are manufacturable, testable, and meet quality, reliability, and cost targets.
Key Responsibilities
- Characterization & Validation: Develop characterization plans and define corner-lot requirements across process, voltage, temperature, and manufacturing lots. Analyze electrical, optical, and functional distributions, set production test limits and guardbands, and drive qualification readiness.
- Statistical Analysis & Process Capability: Analyze product and manufacturing data; monitor and improve Cp/Cpk, yield, parametric distributions, and process stability. Identify sources of variation, drive corrective actions, and issue reports and recommendations supporting production releases.
- Design of Experiments (DOE): Plan, execute, and analyze DOEs covering process variables, test conditions, environmental factors, and manufacturing variation to optimize performance and margins; present recommendations to cross-functional teams.
- MSA & GRR: Lead GRR studies, evaluate measurement capability and repeatability, and improve test robustness and accuracy. Ensure test systems meet statistical requirements and support correlation across engineering systems, ATE, probe, and OSAT test environments.
- Yield & Quality: Analyze wafer sort and final test yield, lead root cause investigations of yield detractors, assess potential test escapes, and recommend screening improvements. Partner with Design and Test to improve quality and test coverage and drive continuous improvement through defect trend reporting and metrics reviews.
- Fab & OSAT Interface: Serve as primary technical interface for product-related manufacturing issues. Work with foundries on process performance, excursions, capability trends, and yield programs, and with OSATs on production performance, yield loss, test program implementation, and efficiency.
- Test Program Quality & Release: Partner with ATE Test Engineers on test effectiveness, guardbands, correlation, characterization coverage, and robustness. Review and approve production test limits, balancing quality, yield, customer requirements, and cost.
- NPI: Collaborate with Design from concept through volume release while driving DFx. Define manufacturing readiness and release-to-production criteria, participate in design, characterization, and production readiness reviews, complete gate review actions on schedule, and drive successful ramps.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's or master's degree in electrical or computer engineering, Physics, Semiconductor Engineering, Applied Statistics, or a related technical discipline.
- 5+ years of semiconductor Product Engineering experience, including NPI and production ramp support.
- Strong understanding of wafer fabrication, assembly, and test processes, with direct experience working with foundries and OSAT partners.
- Experience leading characterization and yield improvement programs.
- Technical expertise in characterization methodologies, yield analysis and improvement, Cp/Cpk, SPC, DOE, GRR/MSA, correlation studies, root cause analysis, semiconductor manufacturing processes, wafer sort and final test operations, and product qualification.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with advanced semiconductor technologies, such as photonic integrated circuits (PICs), silicon photonics, high-speed SerDes, analog, mixed-signal, or optical products.
- Knowledge of Advantest V93000 (93K) production test environments.
- Familiarity with JMP, Minitab, MATLAB, Python, and SQL.
- Understanding of automotive or telecom quality methodologies.
Key Competencies
Strong statistical and analytical thinking; data-driven decision making; excellent problem solving; cross-functional leadership and the ability to influence technical direction across organizations; effective communication with internal teams and external partners; and strong project management and prioritization skills.
Success Metrics
Product yield and Cp/Cpk against targets; characterization quality and completeness; DOE effectiveness; GRR and measurement capability improvements; reduced manufacturing excursions; production ramp success and time-to-production readiness; product quality and customer returns; and yield and cost improvements.
