Applications Engineer – ECI Chemical Metrology / Process Control

To make electronics, you need chips, wafers, transistors, reticles, and... To make these, you must see, test and manufacture them at scale—faster and better than ever before. That's where KLA comes in. Whether you're early in your career or an experienced professional, you'll solve complex challenges, work alongside brilliant minds and help shape the future of technology.

Group/Division

The Semiconductor Products and Customers (Semi PC) business unit designs, builds and sells KLA’s product portfolio to help chip manufacturers meet high-quality standards for technologies like AI, data centers, automotive and electronic devices. Our inspection, metrology, and analytics systems detect and monitor defects across logic and memory chips, specialty semiconductors, wafers, reticles, advanced packaging, process equipment and materials. We also develop technologies for specialty processes, IC substrates, and PCB manufacturing, including etch and deposition, component inspection, and imaging and analytics. The Customer Engagement (CE) division is a field-based group of technical experts who partner closely with customers to provide a comprehensive portfolio of KLA products that support yield improvement from R&D through high-volume production. The team helps align KLA’s solutions with customer needs, supports product performance, identifies new opportunities and gathers insights to guide future innovation—all while maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction.

What You'll Do

In this role, you will play a key part in advancing business priorities by delivering high-impact work across your area of expertise.

Responsibilities

• Provide applications support for ECI chemical metrology and process control products at semiconductor customer sites.
• Develop a deep understanding of customer processes, technical requirements, and pain points.
• Support introduction, qualification, ramp, and optimization of ECI systems and applications.
• Work with customers to analyze chemical/process data and identify opportunities to improve process control and manufacturing performance.
• Support application development associated with new chemicals and semiconductor processes.
• Serve as a technical bridge between customers, local KLA teams, chemical suppliers, process equipment suppliers, and the ECI division.
• Work closely with ECI engineering and R&D teams to troubleshoot technical issues and develop solutions for customer requirements.
• Support customer training on analysis principles, system applications, and best-known methods.
• Identify new application and business opportunities through close engagement with customer process engineers.
• Support technical evaluations, demonstrations, upgrades, and other pre-sales activities as required.
• Document technical results and communicate findings and recommendations clearly to customers and internal teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in semiconductor manufacturing or semiconductor equipment.
• Knowledge or experience in wet processes, electrochemical plating, wet clean/etch, or chemical analysis/metrology.
• Experience with chemical/process analytical techniques or process control.
• Experience working directly with semiconductor fabs or process engineers.
• Experience with advanced packaging processes such as plating or TSV-related processes.
• Experience collaborating with overseas engineering/R&D organizations.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Materials Science, Semiconductor Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Strong analytical and structured problem-solving skills.
• Ability to analyze experimental and process data and translate the results into practical technical recommendations.
• Strong communication skills and ability to work directly with customers.
• Ability to collaborate across multiple functions and cultures.
• Willingness to work at semiconductor customer sites and travel as required.
• Business-level communication skills in Japanese and ability to work in English with global engineering teams.

About KLA

We provide advanced inspection tools, metrology systems, process solutions, and computational analytics that make electronics possible, tackling complex challenges. From electron and photon optics to machine learning and data analytics, we seek perfection at the most fundamental level of matter in the universe. If you want to make electronics that push industries forward and make the world a better place, join us.

Use of AI Statement 

At KLA, our interviews seek to understand your individual skills, problem-solving approach and authentic thinking. To ensure a fair and consistent evaluation, the use of AI, recording tools or other technologies to generate, suggest or provide responses during interviews—whether virtual or in person—is not permitted unless explicitly approved in advance as part of a reasonable accommodation or invited by the interviewer. Use of these tools may interfere with our ability to evaluate your individual qualifications and affect your candidacy. KLA is committed to advancing innovation through responsible AI, and we value candidates who share this mindset.

We offer a competitive, family friendly total rewards package. We design our programs to reflect our commitment to an inclusive environment, while ensuring we provide benefits that meet the diverse needs of our employees.

KLA is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.