Factory Automation Engineer

FormFactor•Farmers Branch, TX

23h•Onsite

About The Position

FormFactor, Inc. is seeking a hands-on Factory Automation Engineer to develop, deploy, integrate, and sustain practical factory automation solutions. These solutions aim to improve safety, efficiency, quality, reliability, traceability, and data accuracy within a high-availability semiconductor manufacturing environment. This role will be instrumental in supporting the startup, qualification, scale-up, and long-term sustainment of the Farmers Branch, TX manufacturing facility. The engineer will collaborate closely with various teams including Equipment Engineering, Process Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, Facilities, EHS, IT Manufacturing Systems, vendors, and site leadership to transform operational needs into robust automation and equipment integration solutions.

Requirements

Minimum of 5 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 3 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD without experience; or equivalent work experience.
Strong problem-solving, troubleshooting, and analytical skills.
Ability to prioritize and support production-critical issues in a fast-paced startup and scale-up environment.
Clear communication and effective collaboration with cross-functional teams.
Self-driven ownership, disciplined documentation, and a continuous improvement mindset.
Automation Scripting
Bash (Scripting Language)
Change Control Processes
Cross-Functional Collaboration
IT Problem Solving
Linux Environments
Manufacturing Systems
Microsoft Windows Environment
Power Shell Scripting
Python (Programming Language)
Terraform (Software)
Working Independently

Responsibilities

Develop, deploy, and sustain automation solutions for probe card, wafer fab, VPS, assembly, and test manufacturing operations from concept and requirements through commissioning, release, documentation, troubleshooting, and continuous improvement.
Translate manufacturing, equipment, process, quality, and operator needs into automation requirements, user stories, functional specifications, equipment interface requirements, and practical implementation plans.
Improve manufacturability, reduce manual operations, strengthen error proofing, enable traceability, and support the factory automation roadmap for a startup and scale-up manufacturing environment.
Utilize automation technologies including robotics, PLC/HMI controls, sensors, actuators, motion control, machine vision, barcode/RFID, data collection, equipment integration, station controllers, and workflow automation.
Design assistive automation, machine control upgrades, process automation, and material handling solutions that improve operator safety, ergonomics, throughput, yield, cycle time, and equipment reliability.
Automate equipment, product, process, maintenance, and quality data capture to support traceability, SPC, FDC, yield analysis, dashboards, maintenance planning, and factory decision-making.
Integrate manufacturing equipment with factory systems such as MES, CMMS, SPC, FDC, APC, recipe management, dispatch, scheduling, data lake, reporting, and analytics platforms.
Support equipment-to-host communication and factory integration concepts including SECS/GEM, GEM300, EDA/Interface A, OPC UA, REST APIs, message brokers, SQL databases, and custom equipment interfaces where applicable.
Provide production support for automation and integration issues, troubleshoot equipment-to-host communication problems, restore uptime, identify root cause, and drive corrective and preventive actions for recurring events.
Participate in equipment startup, site acceptance, qualification, validation, release-to-production, change control, and handoff activities for new or modified automated equipment and factory systems.
Partner with IT, cybersecurity, infrastructure, vendors, and engineering teams to ensure automation solutions are reliable, maintainable, secure, supportable, and aligned with site standards.
Create and maintain technical documentation, standard work, troubleshooting guides, validation records, source control notes, training materials, and operational handoff packages.