Manager, Software Engineering

Onto Innovation•Tucson, AZ

28d•$115,200 - $172,800•Onsite

About The Position

The Software Engineering Manager leads software development at Onto Tucson, owning the team and the codebase for 4D branded products. 4D's product portfolio is primarily optical metrology — specifically laser interferometry — and industrial metrology — primarily fringe projection — along with the software tools used in production of these devices. This is a player-coach role: the Software Engineering Manager runs the team, sets technical direction, and stays close enough to the code to make architecture and code-review calls — while owning hiring, performance management, and cross-functional partnerships with Engineering, Product Management, Manufacturing, Service, and Quality.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Physics, or related technical field, OR equivalent technical experience and demonstrated track record of software engineering leadership.
8–12 years of software engineering experience with 3+ years managing engineers.
Demonstrated experience leading multi-domain software teams (desktop applications, embedded / firmware, internal tooling) — or at least one of these domains plus willingness to grow into the others.
Experience in scientific instrumentation, optical metrology, semiconductor capital equipment, medical devices, or comparable precision-instrument software.
Hands-on experience with the software development lifecycle in a regulated or QMS environment.
Strong technical depth in one or more of: C# / .NET (Windows desktop), C / C++ (firmware / embedded), Python (analysis and internal tooling).
Strong understanding of software architecture, performance optimization, and cross-platform development.
Familiarity with soft real-time systems, instrument control, and hardware-software integration.
Working knowledge of source control (git), CI / CD, and modern development workflows.
Strong Scrum practitioner; experience running sprint cadences, backlog grooming, and retrospectives in Jira and GitHub workflows.
Strong communication skills — able to explain software trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders (Manufacturing, Service, Sales, customers).
Coaching and team-building; experience growing engineers from junior to mid / senior level.
Comfort operating in an ISO 9001 or comparable QMS environment with software validation requirements.
Adherence to company ethics, customer-confidentiality, and gifts / conflict-of-interest policies in all customer and supplier interactions.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience with optical metrology, interferometry, or scientific imaging applications.
Experience with FPGA development or hardware-software co-design.
Experience with GPU acceleration (CUDA, OpenCL, or compute shaders) for performance-critical metrology computation.
Experience with robotic automation integration in industrial product lines (relevant to 4D’s Inspec product line).
Demonstrated track record of driving adoption of AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot, Claude or other LLM-based development workflows) in a software engineering team.

Responsibilities

Lead, hire, and develop a team of software engineers and QA engineers across desktop application development, firmware / embedded engineering, and internal tooling, partnering closely with the Software Architect on technical direction.
Conduct performance reviews, succession planning, hiring, and career development; build progression paths from junior to mid / senior level.
Establish team rituals: standups, code-review cadence, sprint planning, retrospectives.
Restore disciplined Scrum practice across the team: sprint planning, daily standups, sprint review, retrospectives, and a well-groomed product backlog.
Build a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and continuous improvement.
Set technical direction for the software portfolio: customer-facing analysis tools, instrument firmware, and internal manufacturing / test software.
Own software development practices: code review, testing standards, branching and release strategy, CI / CD, version-control discipline.
Make and document architecture decisions; participate hands-on in design reviews and complex code reviews.
Maintain a roadmap for technical debt, platform health, and security / compliance updates.
Drive development of customer-facing software.
Partner with Product Management on roadmap, feature prioritization, and customer release commitments.
Coordinate with the Senior Service Manager on field issues that originate in software, including hot-fix release planning.
Partner with Engineering on product development, New Product Introduction (NPI), and Engineering Changes (ECs / ECOs) that have software impact.
Partner with the Senior Service Manager on field-software issues, FSE diagnostic tools, and customer escalations with a software root cause.
Partner with Quality on QMS-related software documentation, validation, software-related CAPAs, and audit support.
Own the software quality program: defect tracking, regression testing, release validation, and customer-facing release notes.
Plan, track, and deliver software releases on commitment using Jira; track program status against committed milestones.
Track and report software KPIs to senior leadership; provide weekly program status.
Ensure software development practices align with applicable QMS requirements.
Drive adoption of AI-assisted development tools — GitHub Copilot, Claude Opus, and other LLM-based pair-programming and code-review tools — as a primary lever for engineering productivity and code quality.
Establish prompt-engineering and AI pair-programming best practices; build internal playbooks for when and how AI tools are most effective on 4D’s codebase.
Integrate AI-assisted code review into the development workflow alongside human-judgment review; balance speed with engineering rigor.
Measure and report on AI-tool adoption metrics: usage rate across the team, impact on cycle time, defect rate, and developer satisfaction.
Drive engineering productivity improvements: developer tooling, test automation, deployment automation.
Build engineering capability through training, mentorship, conference participation, and technical learning.