Application Engineer IV (E4)
$147,000 - $202,500 USD yearly
Originally posted 3 November 2026 by the employer.
About the role
As an Application Engineer IV (E4) at Applied Materials in Santa Clara, CA, you will serve as the technical expert for optical inspection systems supporting semiconductor and advanced packaging applications.
What you'll do
- Develop, optimize, and validate inspection recipes to meet customer requirements and manufacturing use cases.
- Develop and execute comprehensive application and system-level test plans to validate performance against product specifications.
- Support New Product Introduction (NPI) activities, including characterization, performance validation, beta testing, and customer evaluations.
- Work closely with customers to analyze process challenges, defect mechanisms, and inspection requirements, translating them into system and application solutions.
- Support onsite customer activities, including tool evaluations, troubleshooting, process development, and performance demonstrations.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams including Systems, Software, Algorithms, Product Engineering, and Marketing to drive product development and deployment.
What you'll need
- Minimum 3+ years of proven industry experience in wafer inspection or advanced packaging processes, with demonstrated hands-on experience supporting manufacturing and customer applications.
- Experience serving as a technical expert for optical inspection systems in semiconductor or advanced packaging applications.
- Proven ability to analyze experimental results, generate technical reports, and present findings to engineering teams and customers.
- Willingness and ability to travel internationally at least 30% of the time, with additional travel as business needs require.
Skills: optical inspection, recipe optimization, customer applications, advanced packaging, NPI
More semiconductor jobs: Applied Materials jobs · Field applications engineer jobs · Santa Clara jobs
This role has been open 0 days — well below the 82-day median for Applications FAE roles.
Applications FAE · Metrology Inspection
|
Open roles in category
131
|
Median days open
82 d
|
Category median salary (all employers)
$132k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Applied Materials | All employers we track in this specialty (131 roles · 8 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 5 | 131 |
| Median days open | 119 d | 82 d (+37 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $132k |
Skills observed across this category: optical inspection, recipe optimization, customer applications, advanced packaging, NPI
Who's hiring in this category
- KLA Corporation · 99 open roles · median 77 d
- Onto Innovation · 18 open roles · median 103 d
- Applied Materials (this employer) · 4 open roles · median 139 d
- ASML · 4 open roles · median 80 d
- Micron Technology · 2 open roles · median 64 d
- Veeco Instruments · 2 open roles · median 96 d
How we counted: 131 open Applications FAE (Metrology Inspection) roles from 8 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 3 Nov 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there. Figures refresh nightly.