Development Engineer III

First Solar (US)•Santa Clara, CA

3d•$109,460 - $156,000•Hybrid

About The Position

First Solar reserves the right to offer you a role most applicable to your experience and skillset. This role involves investigating the performance, variability, and reliability of perovskite solar cells using various device analysis methods. The engineer will own metrology for baseline, ensuring quality control, uptime, and maintenance. They will develop methodologies to monitor critical processes and establish correlations with performance and stability, and perform device research to enhance thin film solar cell performance and stability while reducing manufacturing cost. The role requires planning, executing, and characterizing development engineering experiments in both laboratory and manufacturing environments with strategic foresight, and applying statistical and engineering methods to optimize organizational effectiveness and improve methods for others.

Requirements

Technical expert and innovator in device physics, optical and electrical device characterization, thin-film metrology and equipment development.
Expert and hands on experience in laboratory or manufacturing environment.
In depth knowledge in several fields from the list of photovoltaic device theory, materials science, process engineering, characterization techniques and other fields relevant to First Solar's technology.
Strong sense of project ownership with hands-on and can-do attitude.
Strong communication skills across organizations.

Nice To Haves

Prior experience in perovskite photovoltaics or optoelectronics is a plus.

Responsibilities

Use various methods of device analysis to investigate performance, variability and reliability of perovskite solar cells.
Own metrology for baseline ensuring quality control, uptime and maintenance.
Develop methodology to monitor critical processes and establish correlations with performance and stability.
Perform device research to enhance thin film solar cell performance and stability and to reduce manufacturing cost.
Plan, execute and characterize development engineering experiments in the laboratory and manufacturing environment with strategic foresight.
Drives actions with strategic foresight.
Apply statistical and engineering methods to optimize organizational effectiveness.
Improve methods for use by others.
Identify opportunities for improvement in solar cell efficiency, material selection and process/equipment design through engineering, scientific or empirical methods.
Improve state of the art techniques for material analysis, statistical analysis of data, or execution planning of experiments.
Develop techniques to understand failure modes and mechanisms in solar cell devices.
Analyze large data sets to identify trends and correlations relating device processing to stability.
Partner with baseline team to identify root causes of excursions in solar cell device processing using film metrology and device analysis.
At times, significant amount of time may be spent in the lab to validate, observe, investigate while trying to understand certain failure modes.
Implement reliability testing under various stress conditions including light, heat, thermal cycling, etc.
Effective communicator with internal and external partners and customers.
Effective team members that can support cross-functional projects and take ownership of sub-deliverables.
May train, mentor and manage junior and peers on specific subject matters.
Comply with Company's Environmental, Quality, Safety or any other policies that have been enforced.
Contributes to continuous improvement of said policies.
Other duties as assigned.
Job description subject to change at any time.