Staff QA Engineer

Job Title

Staff QA Engineer

Role Summary

The Staff QA Engineer ensures the quality, reliability, and release readiness of Onto Innovation's MBU software product and related semiconductor metrology software platforms. The role combines system validation, test automation, AI-assisted quality engineering, customer escalation support, and cross-functional collaboration.

Experience Level

Senior level - requires five or more years of software quality assurance, test automation, or related engineering experience.

Responsibilities

Key responsibilities include test strategy, automation, AI-assisted engineering, release validation, and customer issue resolution.

• Develop and execute test strategies, test plans, and test cases from requirements and designs.
• Perform functional, integration, system, interface, regression, performance, benchmarking, and end-to-end workflow testing.
• Validate workflows covering equipment operation, measurement data acquisition, recipe setup, analysis, and solution output.
• Participate in release planning, quality risk assessment, defect triage, and release readiness reviews.
• Track and report quality metrics, defect trends, test coverage, and release risks.
• Design, develop, maintain, and improve automated test frameworks and regression suites.
• Automate functional, integration, regression, API, workflow, and performance tests and integrate them into CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps).
• Use Git/GitHub for source control, code review, and automation asset management.
• Apply AI-assisted tools to assist test design, test generation, script development, log analysis, and defect investigation while ensuring human review and governance.
• Reproduce, investigate, document, and validate customer-reported issues and work with cross-functional teams to resolve critical problems.
• Provide technical guidance and mentoring to other SQA engineers.

Requirements

Must-have technical skills and experience; preferred items listed separately.

• Five or more years of software quality assurance, software testing, test automation, or related engineering experience.
• Strong knowledge of software QA methodologies, defect management, test coverage, and release validation.
• Experience creating test strategies, plans, test cases, and release validation criteria.
• Hands-on experience designing or maintaining automated testing solutions and regression suites.
• Proficiency in at least one programming/scripting language (Python, C#, Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, or PowerShell).
• Hands-on experience with Azure DevOps (ADO), Git/GitHub, CI/CD pipelines, work-item tracking, and test management practices.
• Experience working in Agile/Scrum environments and strong analytical, troubleshooting, and communication skills.

Nice-to-have:

• Practical experience with GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Copilot, or similar AI-assisted tools.
• Experience applying AI/ML techniques to testing, defect analysis, or quality analytics.
• Experience testing distributed systems, APIs, desktop applications, databases, or hardware/software integrations.
• Experience supporting customer escalations and working with global customers or field teams.
• Knowledge of semiconductor processes, optical or thin-film metrology, numerical analysis, or machine learning.
• Relevant certifications such as ISTQB.

Education Requirements

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Material Science, or a related discipline. Relevant certifications (for example, ISTQB) are optional and listed as preferred.

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.