Principal Software Engineer

Onto Innovation•Wilmington, MA

About The Position

Onto Innovation is seeking a highly experienced Software Engineer / Technical Lead to provide technical leadership and hands-on software development for advanced semiconductor inspection and metrology platforms. This is a senior individual contributor role responsible for software architecture, system integration, technical problem solving, and delivery of critical NPD software capabilities. The successful candidate will work across software, hardware, optics, automation, and applications teams to develop reliable, scalable, and maintainable solutions for complex capital equipment systems. The ideal candidate combines deep software engineering expertise with strong system-level thinking, hardware-software integration experience, and the ability to influence technical direction across cross-functional teams without direct people management responsibility.

Requirements

BS or MS in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related technical discipline.
10+ years of software development experience delivering complex hardware-integrated systems.
Experience integrating software with electromechanical systems, automation platforms, or scientific instrumentation.
Background in C#, .NET, C++, or similar object-oriented languages.
Experience developing multi-threaded, distributed, or high-performance applications.
Strong understanding of software architecture, system design, debugging, and root-cause analysis.
Proven ability to lead technical initiatives and influence engineering teams through expertise and collaboration.
Excellent communication, problem-solving, and cross-functional teamwork skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience with semiconductor inspection, metrology, wafer handling, recipe management, factory automation, or SECS/GEM, equipment diagnostics.
Experience supporting customer escalations, factory acceptance, system qualification, and field introduction of complex equipment platforms.
Experience with optics, motion control, robotics, or precision instrumentation.
Experience with Agile development methodologies, CI/CD, and automated testing.

Responsibilities

Serve as a senior individual contributor and technical lead for new product development by translating product objectives, customer needs, and system requirements into executable technical plans, software designs, measurable deliverables, and clear engineering tasks.
Drive technical decision-making for software tradeoffs involving performance, reliability, maintainability, scalability, serviceability, platform reuse, and long-term architectural health.
Develop production-quality software using modern engineering practices and object-oriented design.
Contribute to software quality, reliability, maintainability, and platform reuse initiatives.
Collaborate with systems, hardware, optics, applications, manufacturing, and service teams to deliver integrated solutions.
Troubleshoot complex software and system-level issues spanning application software, hardware interfaces, motion control, automation, and field deployments.
Mentor engineers through technical guidance, code reviews, and engineering best practices.
Communicate program status, risks, tradeoffs, technical decisions, and recovery plans clearly to leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.