Senior/Staff BEOL Process Integration Engineer
NeurophosJob Title
Senior/Staff BEOL Process Integration Engineer
Role Summary
Embedded at the foundry in Leuven (IMEC), you will own BEOL process integration for Neurophos's advanced photonic chip. The role interfaces daily with foundry process engineers, metrology teams, and Neurophos device and design teams to qualify process steps and drive yield, reliability, and performance improvements.
Neurophos develops dense silicon-photonic inference accelerators to improve AI energy efficiency.
Experience Level
Senior-level. The posting requests approximately 3+ years of relevant experience in BEOL/FEOL process integration, fab/device engineering, or similar roles.
Responsibilities
Lead and coordinate BEOL process integration, qualification, and continuous improvement with the foundry and internal teams.
- Own the BEOL process integration flow (metallization, dielectric deposition, CMP, lithography, etch, etc.).
- Drive process development, transfer, and qualification between development and HVM.
- Define and maintain process specifications, control limits, and SPC for critical BEOL steps.
- Identify process/layout interactions and integration risks; implement mitigation and DFM rules.
- Review GDS/GDSII layout for process compatibility and recommend design changes.
- Design and execute DOEs in the fab to determine robust process windows.
- Lead fault isolation using electrical test, inline metrology, and yield data; coordinate physical failure analysis (SEM/TEM/FIB/EDX).
- Correlate process excursions with electrical/optical impacts and drive corrective actions (8D/root-cause).
- Define BEOL spec documents, test-structure requirements, KGD strategy, and qualification acceptance criteria.
- Serve as Neurophos's primary technical liaison with foundry BEOL process engineering and represent the company in reviews and change-control meetings.
Requirements
Must-have technical skills and on-site availability; nice-to-have items are listed separately.
- Must have: 3+ years of experience in BEOL or FEOL process integration, FAB device engineering, product engineering, or process engineering in a semiconductor foundry/IDM environment.
- Hands-on familiarity with core BEOL/FEOL unit processes: optical lithography, dry/wet etch, thin-film deposition (CVD/PVD/ALD), CMP, and metallization (Cu, W, Al).
- Ability to read and interpret GDS/GDSII layout and provide DFM feedback to design teams.
- Proven experience leading fault isolation and failure analysis from electrical test to physical root cause; experience with SEM, FIB, TEM, EDX or equivalent techniques.
- Experience defining process specification limits and SPC control strategies and driving foundry compliance.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills; comfortable with large datasets and statistical process control tools.
- Excellent written and verbal English communication skills and ability to work in a multicultural environment.
- Willingness to work on-site at the foundry location in Leuven, Belgium.
- Nice to have: direct experience in process development or process transfer between development and manufacturing; familiarity with photonic or optoelectronic device processing.
Education Requirements
Education in Electrical Engineering, Materials Science, Chemical Engineering, Applied Physics, or a related discipline is requested.
About the Company
Company: Neurophos
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, California, United States
Startup developing silicon-photonic AI accelerator chips that use programmable metasurfaces and dense optical cells to perform matrix multiplications at the speed of light, targeting large-scale AI inference with much higher energy efficiency and performance than traditional electronic approaches.
