Director, Optical Engineering - Santa Clara, CA, United States
$210,000 - $289,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 11 August 2026 by the employer.
About the role
As Director, Optical Engineering, you will own technical leadership and execution of engineering projects, spearheading research and development of new technologies for the Imagine and Process Control Group (IPC).
What you'll do
- Manage a team of Optical Engineers across multiple programs.
- Lead and/or develop and execute significantly complex system projects, overseeing and approving designs.
- Define experiments and determine meaningful data required for evaluation and technical decisions.
- Troubleshoot a wide range of complex problems and support high-level physics-related applications in the lab and field.
- Lead the selection and management of strategic vendors, maintaining relationships with external customers of innovation.
- Provide mentoring for less experienced physicists/scientists.
What you'll need
- 20+ years of experience in optical design engineering for high-performance optical systems in the semiconductor industry.
- 8+ years leading Engineering teams.
- Experience leading teams in the design cycle from specification development to integration.
- Ability to provide support for system alignment procedures and tooling development.
- Expertise in developing optical systems within a product development environment.
- Experience evaluating and analyzing optical systems, understanding performance limits and manufacturability.
- Ability to develop alignment strategies and tooling, and define subsystem level requirements.
This role has been open 67 days — well above the 50-day median for Hardware Systems Engineering roles.
Hardware Systems Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
966
|
Median days open
50 d
|
Median salary
$156k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Applied Materials | All employers we track in this specialty (966 roles · 102 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 50 | 966 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 156 | 6114 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 65 d | 50 d (+15 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $156k |
Who's hiring in this category
- Intel Corporation · 74 open roles · median 35 d
- KLA Corporation · 65 open roles · median 43 d
- Teradyne · 57 open roles · median 29 d
- NVIDIA · 52 open roles · median 67 d
- Applied Materials (this employer) · 50 open roles · median 65 d
- AMD · 47 open roles · median 49 d
How we counted: 966 open Hardware Systems Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 102 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 17 Oct 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.