Senior Software Engineer

Onto Innovation•Wilmington, MA

6d•$115,200 - $172,800

About The Position

Onto Innovation is seeking a Software Engineer for its Inspection Business Unit (IBU). The role requires maintaining a system-level understanding of a complex inspection platform spanning optics, mechanics, electronics, and software, while also being able to investigate implementation details as needed. Engineers map customer problems and application requirements to appropriate technical solutions, with responsibilities and ownership scaled to experience level. The position contributes to new product development and the creation of algorithms for Onto inspection platforms, applying machine learning, image processing, computer vision, mathematics, and optics. Work may include optical imaging modeling and calibration, image segmentation, classification, and detection, as well as software design, development, testing, debugging, and performance optimization. The engineer collaborates across technical and product teams, documents designs and troubleshooting, and may provide technical mentorship at senior levels. AI coding agents are used to accelerate development, while the engineer remains accountable for architecture, design integrity, and code quality.

Requirements

PhD, MS, or Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Physics, or a related field.
Related experience by degree level: doctorate with 0+ years, master's with 0+ years, or bachelor's with 0+ years.
Ability to reason about systems at multiple levels of abstraction, from high-level architecture to implementation details.
Strong problem-solving, analytical, and communication skills, including the ability to explain complex system behavior to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Competency or demonstrable coursework in at least one numerically focused environment such as Python or MATLAB, including linear algebra, image processing, and/or machine learning libraries.
Competency or demonstrable coursework in at least one compiled or production language used in large-scale software systems, such as C++, C#, or Java.

Nice To Haves

Experience in semiconductor inspection, machine vision, robotics, or similar technical domains where hardware/software co-design is essential.
Track record of diagnosing cross-subsystem issues spanning optics, electronics, firmware, and application software.
Experience using AI coding agents such as Copilot, Cursor, or Aider to accelerate development.
Experience with software development methodologies such as Agile, Scrum, or Kanban.
Experience with version control and CI/CD practices.
Experience debugging complex multi-threaded software environments.
Familiarity with embedded systems, hardware communication protocols, and/or real-time constraints.

Responsibilities

Build and continuously refine an accurate mental model of the inspection platform, including optics, motion, electronics, image acquisition, and the software stack.
Translate customer problems and application requirements into well-scoped engineering tasks by reasoning across subsystem boundaries.
Move between system-level architecture and technical details such as databases, algorithm performance, hardware, data flow, GPUs, and GUIs.
Participate in new product development with hardware engineers, application engineers, Technical Project Managers, and Program/Product Managers.
Apply machine learning, image processing, computer vision, mathematics, and optics to develop algorithms integrated into inspection platforms.
Develop or contribute to optical imaging modeling and calibration, and/or image segmentation, classification, and detection algorithms.
Write, test, and debug software for high-quality, reliable operation, and optimize it for performance and scalability.
Perform or lead requirement analysis, detailed software design, production code development, and associated test plans, depending on experience.
Participate in design and code reviews with systems engineers, software developers, and other technical staff.
Use AI coding agents to accelerate implementation while retaining ownership of architecture decisions, design integrity, and code quality.
Stay current with research and industrial practices in machine vision inspection, image processing, machine learning, and AI-assisted engineering.
Document software designs, system-level rationale, development processes, and troubleshooting steps.
Support teammates and, at senior levels, provide technical mentorship, especially in systems thinking.
Contribute to improvements in development workflows and tooling, including AI-assisted practices.