Senior Software Engineer

Job Title

Senior Software Engineer

Role Summary

Join the Inspection Business Unit to develop software and algorithms for Onto's optical inspection platforms. The role requires systems-level thinking across optics, mechanics, electronics, and software and delivering production-quality solutions in machine vision and image processing.

Work with hardware engineers, application engineers, and product teams on new product development and customer deployments; senior hires take architecture ownership and provide technical mentorship.

Experience Level

Senior-level. Typical experience: 5+ years; responsibilities will be scoped to experience and may include junior (0–2) and mid (2–5) level expectations for less-experienced hires.

Responsibilities

Deliver system-level software and algorithms for optical inspection platforms. Specific duties vary by level.

• Maintain and refine a mental model of the inspection platform (optics, motion, electronics, image acquisition, software).
• Translate customer requirements into well-scoped engineering tasks spanning subsystems.
• Design, implement, test, and optimize algorithms for image processing, computer vision, and machine learning.
• Develop production software: write tests, debug, perform code reviews, and optimize for performance and scalability.
• Participate in New Product Development with cross-functional teams; lead technical design and architecture at senior levels.
• Document designs, system rationale, development processes, and troubleshooting steps.
• Use AI coding agents to accelerate implementation while maintaining ownership of architecture and code quality.
• Provide technical mentorship and contribute to improving development workflows and tooling.
• Travel internationally to customer sites at least 20% of the time.

Requirements

Must-have:

• Proven ability to reason about systems at multiple levels of abstraction and decompose cross-subsystem problems.
• Strong problem-solving, analytical, and communication skills for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Proficiency in a numerical environment such as Python or MATLAB, including linear algebra, image processing, and/or machine learning libraries.
• Proficiency in a compiled or production language such as C++, C#, or Java.
• Experience writing, testing, debugging, and optimizing production-quality software with attention to performance and scalability.
• Willingness and ability to travel internationally ~20% of the time.

Nice-to-have:

• Experience in semiconductor inspection, machine vision, robotics, or hardware/software co-design.
• Track record diagnosing cross-subsystem issues spanning optics, electronics, firmware, and application software.
• Experience debugging multithreaded environments, embedded systems, hardware communication protocols, or real-time constraints.
• Familiarity with Agile methodologies, version control, and CI/CD practices.
• Experience effectively using AI coding agents (e.g., Copilot) to accelerate development.

Education Requirements

PhD, MS, or Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Physics, or a related technical field (the posting lists Doctorate, Master's, or Bachelor's degrees in these fields).

About the Company

Company: Onto Innovation

Headquarters: Wilmington, MA, United States

Onto Innovation develops process-control solutions for the semiconductor industry, offering optical inspection, 3D metrology, defect inspection, composition analysis, factory analytics, and lithography technologies to improve yield, performance, and reliability across the semiconductor value chain.