Staff Systems Design Engineer - Milpitas, CA, United States
$186,200 - $273,067 USD yearly
Originally posted 3 October 2026 by the employer.
About the role
What you'll do
- Own system-level performance planning, modeling, and error budget development, ensuring performance requirements are translated into measurable subsystem specifications.
- Define and allocate system requirements across source, optics, detector, mechatronics, vacuum, thermal, controls, and software domains.
- Drive system-level trade studies and architecture decisions to optimize performance, cost, reliability, manufacturability, and scalability.
- Serve as the technical lead for system integration, bringing together hardware, software, algorithms, and data flows into a robust production-ready solution.
- Lead root-cause investigations for complex performance issues, utilizing first-principles analysis, modeling, experimental methods, and statistical approaches.
What you'll need
- Doctorate degree with 5 years, Master's degree with 8 years, or Bachelor's degree with 12 years of related work experience.
- Demonstrated expertise in complex system architecture, system engineering methodologies, and multidisciplinary product development.
- Extensive experience developing and managing system error budgets, performance models, and system-level requirements.
- Strong analytical foundation in physics, optics, electronics, mechatronics, controls, or related engineering disciplines.
- Experience delivering complex capital equipment, instrumentation, or semiconductor manufacturing systems from concept through production.
- Strong programming and data-analysis capabilities (Python, MATLAB, or equivalent).
Nice to have
- Deep experience with X-ray metrology, scattering systems, computational imaging, or electron/ion-beam instrumentation.
- Proven track record leading system architecture and performance development for semiconductor capital equipment.
- Expertise in system error budgeting, sensitivity analysis, uncertainty quantification, and performance verification methodologies.
- Familiarity with AI/ML-assisted system optimization or data-driven metrology solutions.
- Recognized technical leadership through patents, publications, technology roadmaps, or successful commercialization of advanced systems.
Skills: metrology system, system architecture, error budget, subsystem specifications, system integration
This role has been open 6 days — well below the 51-day median for Semiconductor Equipment Engineering roles.
Semiconductor Equipment Engineering · Metrology Inspection
|
Open roles in category
190
|
Median days open
51 d
|
Median salary
$159k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | KLA Corporation | All employers we track in this specialty (190 roles · 25 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 73 | 190 |
| Open roles in the wider Process, Fab & Equipment family | 454 | 9796 · 108 employers |
| Median days open | 37 d | 51 d (−14 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $159k |
Skills observed across this category: metrology system, system architecture, error budget, subsystem specifications, system integration
Who's hiring in this category
- KLA Corporation (this employer) · 73 open roles · median 36 d
- Applied Materials · 25 open roles · median 74 d
- Onto Innovation · 18 open roles · median 70 d
- Lam Research · 13 open roles · median 39 d
- Micron Technology · 11 open roles · median 44 d
- Entegris · 9 open roles · median 71 d
How we counted: 190 open Semiconductor Equipment Engineering (Metrology Inspection) roles from 25 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 9 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 Process, Fab & Equipment family row. Figures refresh nightly.