Senior Principal Applications Engineer / Technical Lead

Job Title

Senior Principal Applications Engineer / Technical Lead

Role Summary

Senior customer-facing technical leader responsible for driving customer success for strategic semiconductor customers across the full lifecycle: evaluation, qualification, deployment, production release, HVM, and long-term support of wafer probe solutions.

Works cross-functionally with Engineering, Product Management, Sales, Service and Manufacturing to enable adoption of advanced test and probe technologies (silicon photonics, CPO, AI/HPC, memory, logic, RF, high-speed digital) and to resolve high-impact customer issues.

Experience Level

Senior. Role expects extensive industry experience; typically 8+ years of relevant experience (see Education Requirements for degree/experience combinations).

Responsibilities

Primary responsibilities supporting strategic customers, technical leadership, and product adoption.

• Act as primary technical advisor and escalation point for strategic semiconductor customers.
• Lead customer engagements from evaluation through qualification, production release, and HVM ramp.
• Conduct on-site technical reviews, production readiness reviews, roadmap briefings, and executive presentations.
• Support product demonstrations, benchmarking, acceptance testing, and customer evaluations.
• Develop and deploy advanced application methodologies for wafer probe and semiconductor test solutions.
• Support electrical, RF, optical, photonics, parametric and high-speed device characterization and qualification.
• Lead complex root-cause investigations across product, process, applications, and manufacturing.
• Mentor and coach applications engineers; establish best practices and enable knowledge sharing across teams.
• Serve as Voice of Customer to Product Management and Engineering; influence roadmaps through customer feedback.

Requirements

Concise list of must-have skills and preferred experience. Degrees and formal education combinations are summarized under Education Requirements below.

• Deep expertise in semiconductor test, wafer probing, probe cards and device characterization.
• Proven track record supporting strategic customers in both development and production environments and leading technical escalations.
• Strong communication and presentation skills; able to engage effectively at engineering and executive levels.
• Ability to lead cross-functional teams and make decisions in ambiguous, time-sensitive situations.
• Willingness and ability to travel domestically and internationally as required.
• Nice-to-have: experience with ATE, probe cards, wafer probe systems, parametric/production test, RF/microwave measurements, signal integrity, silicon photonics, optical characterization, CPO, advanced packaging, NPI, failure analysis, HVM.
• Nice-to-have: scripting/tools such as Python, MATLAB, JMP/JSL for data analysis and automation.

Education Requirements

Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering, Physics, Photonics, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering or related technical discipline is listed as preferred. Education/experience combinations stated: minimum of 8 years related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 6 years with a Master’s degree; or PhD with 3 years experience; or equivalent practical experience.

About the Company

Company: FormFactor

Headquarters: Livermore, California, United States

FormFactor provides test and measurement technologies and services for the semiconductor industry across the product lifecycle - including characterization, modeling, reliability, design debug, qualification and production test. The company serves customers globally through facilities in Asia, Europe, and North America.