Principal Systems Software Engineer, Semiconductor Systems Inspection - CA, Santa Clara, United States
$272,000 - $431,250 USD yearly
Originally posted 24 August 2026 by the employer.
Develop AI products for semiconductor analysis using computer vision and deep learning.
About the role
This role involves developing AI products for semiconductor analysis, focusing on anomaly-generation and inspection workflows for semiconductor manufacturing.
What you'll do
- Define and prototype AI system architectures for semiconductor defect inspection across optical and e-beam inspection, wafer and mask inspection, metrology, and defect-review workflows.
- Advance WFM capabilities for semiconductor inspection, including multimodal representation learning, model adaptation, domain transfer, and data-scarce defect understanding.
- Partner with customers and internal teams to integrate and improve computer vision and multimodal workflows for defect detection, classification, localization, segmentation, nuisance filtering, ADC, and ADR.
- Design agentic inspection flows for air-gapped fab environments that connect data triage, model inference, review assistance, root-cause analysis, human approval, and secure deployment constraints.
- Apply semiconductor metrology, inspection, review, and process context—including CD, LER, LWR, overlay, wafer maps, defect maps, SPC signals, and yield signals—to improve model quality and fab decision support.
- Address noisy, limited, and shifting fab data through tool-to-tool calibration, domain-shift mitigation, synthetic defect generation, noise simulation, and augmentation.
What you'll need
- MS or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience.
- 15+ years of experience in systems design, architecture, and software development.
- 4+ years of current experience in deep learning, machine learning, computer vision, or applied AI.
- Strong Python skills and experience with modern deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
- Experience developing or applying foundational world models in computer vision for classification, detection, segmentation, anomaly detection, or multimodal understanding.
- A record of technical leadership in domain-adaptation approaches relevant to inspection problems.
Skills: AI products, semiconductor analysis, computer vision, deep learning, defect inspection, Python
This role has been open 51 days — exactly the 51-day median for Software Engineering Semiconductor roles.
Software Engineering Semiconductor · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
164
|
Median days open
51 d
|
Median salary
$191k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | NVIDIA | All employers we track in this specialty (164 roles · 44 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 27 | 164 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 993 | 6127 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 213 d | 51 d (+162 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $191k |
Skills observed across this category: AI products, semiconductor analysis, computer vision, deep learning, defect inspection, Python
Who's hiring in this category
- Micron Technology · 28 open roles · median 34 d
- NVIDIA (this employer) · 26 open roles · median 189 d
- Qualcomm · 22 open roles · median 189 d
- Infineon Technologies · 10 open roles · median 43 d
- AMD · 8 open roles · median 65 d
- Applied Materials · 4 open roles · median 85 d
How we counted: 164 open Software Engineering Semiconductor (AI ML Hardware) roles from 44 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 15 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.