Senior Manufacturing Engineer

VIAVI Solutions•Santa Rosa, CA

3d•$81,900 - $152,100

About The Position

VIAVI is seeking a Senior Manufacturing Engineer to support production thin-film coating platforms and processes. The role focuses on keeping production equipment and processes running efficiently, investigating process and hardware issues, and improving uptime, yield, and cycle time. The engineer provides hands-on production support during critical builds, ramps, and tool recoveries, drives corrective and preventive actions through closure, and partners across engineering, maintenance, quality, operations, and other site teams. The role also maintains process control and trend reporting, conducts designed experiments, leads Lean and Six Sigma improvement projects, and develops work instructions and qualification records. The engineer supports the transition of new coating designs from R&D, Product Engineering, and Quality into production. Work is performed in a cleanroom and adjacent production areas, with gowning required. The position is day shift with a flexible schedule; hours may shift to support critical work, and occasional off-shift remote support may be required.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Physics, Materials Science, or an engineering discipline; a master’s degree is preferred.
At least 7 years of manufacturing or process engineering experience in thin-film vacuum deposition, such as sputtering, e-beam evaporation, or ion-assisted deposition.
Hands-on ownership of a production coating platform, including its process window, uptime, yield, and cycle time.
Proven ability to isolate faults on complex electromechanical and vacuum equipment and drive fixes to completion.
Working knowledge of optical coating process control, including in-situ monitoring and ex-situ metrology, and the ability to trace spectral results to process causes.
Working knowledge of PFMEA, CAPA, 8D, SPC, and DOE; Lean and Six Sigma skills with completed projects that produced measurable gains.
Track record of hands-on execution and cross-functional work, from leadership discussions through task-level execution.
Schedule flexibility to support critical builds, ramps, and tool recoveries.
Advanced Excel skills and experience with statistical tools such as JMP or Minitab.
Fluent in English, including reading and writing.
Must be a U.S. Person under ITAR.
Ability to meet the stated physical and cleanroom work requirements, including extended standing and walking, lifting, manual dexterity with small fragile components, and close-vision acuity.

Nice To Haves

Experience with multi-cathode or cluster sputtering, reactive sputtering, or ion-assisted deposition.
Experience qualifying tools after major maintenance or upgrades.
Lean Six Sigma Green Belt or Black Belt certification.
AS9100 or ISO 9001 quality systems experience, and MES and/or ERP experience.
Aerospace, defense, semiconductor, or precision-optics background.
Master’s degree in a relevant discipline.

Responsibilities

Support production thin-film deposition platforms and processes; identify root causes of process and hardware issues and monitor relevant KPIs.
Investigate yield issues, defects, and process excursions at the tool; contain issues and lead root-cause analysis and corrective and preventive actions through closure using 8D/CAPA methodology.
Provide hands-on production support during critical builds, ramps, and tool recoveries, including data analysis, trial runs, acceptance planning, cross-team coordination, and verification of fixes.
Drive tool-level improvements in uptime, yield, and cycle time; requalify equipment after maintenance or modification and ensure repairs and upgrades are completed by maintenance, facilities, and vendors.
Maintain SPC and trend reporting, conduct designed experiments, and lead Lean and Six Sigma projects to reduce scrap and increase throughput.
Write work instructions and qualification records, standardize work across shifts, and train production personnel on process changes.
Help R&D, Product Engineering, and Quality transition new coating designs into production.
Collaborate with Design Engineering, R&D, Equipment Engineering, Maintenance, Quality Engineering, Project Management, Manufacturing, and site leadership.