Director, Software Engineering - Semiconductor Inspection

Job Title

Director, Software Engineering - Semiconductor Inspection

Role Summary

Lead a software engineering organization building AI-powered semiconductor inspection and manufacturing platforms. Manage researchers, engineers, and data scientists to translate ML research into production-grade systems for defect detection, metrology, automation, and yield improvement.

Role is based in Santa Clara, CA and involves cross-functional coordination with robotics, product, and customer teams. Base salary range: 320,000 USD - 488,750 USD.

Experience Level

Senior — requires 15+ years of experience in semiconductor manufacturing and at least 5 years of engineering leadership (planning, staffing, budgeting).

Responsibilities

Drive technical direction, delivery, and customer-facing engagements for AI inspection and manufacturing solutions.

• Define architecture and vision for AI-enabled inspection systems across optical, e-beam, wafer/mask inspection, metrology, and defect review.
• Own strategy for deploying inspection solutions in air-gapped fab environments: data triage, secure inference, review assistance, root-cause analysis, and human-in-the-loop workflows.
• Integrate and evolve inspection workflows including detection, classification, localization, segmentation, nuisance filtering, ADC, and ADR pipelines.
• Establish production-grade evaluation, failure analysis, monitoring, and deployment practices for ML systems.
• Lead roadmap and align technical direction with business outcomes for AI inspection solutions.
• Collaborate with robotics and systems teams to validate autonomous deployments and represent the company in strategic customer engagements.

Requirements

Must-have technical and leadership qualifications. Nice-to-have items are listed separately.

• 15+ years of experience in semiconductor manufacturing, building tools and processes for production environments.
• 5+ years of people/engineering leadership with responsibility for planning, staffing, budgeting, and process improvements.
• Experience with vision and signal-based measurement methods and metrology data workflows.
• Proven track record developing ML/AI algorithms for predictive analytics and automation with measurable outcomes.
• Experience productizing research into production systems with monitoring and failure analysis.
• Strong communication skills and attention to detail; experience coordinating across departments and with customers.

Nice-to-have:

• Experience with agentic inspection solutions, AI copilots, or secure deployments in air-gapped environments.
• Experience collaborating with robotics teams and validating autonomous systems for production use.
• Familiarity with pipelines for ADC/ADR and human-in-the-loop review systems.

Education Requirements

MS or PhD in VLSI Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

About the Company

Company: NVIDIA

Headquarters: Santa Clara, California, USA

NVIDIA is a global leader in accelerated computing, renowned for its innovative solutions in AI and digital twins that transform diverse industries. The company specializes in networking technologies, providing end-to-end InfiniBand and Ethernet solutions for servers and storage that optimize performance and scalability. NVIDIA serves sectors such as high-performance computing, enterprise data centers, and cloud computing, constantly reinventing its products and services to stay ahead in the market.