Senior Staff Applications Engineer

Elevate Semiconductor•San Diego, CA

About The Position

ElevATE Semiconductor designs low-power, high-density ICs for Automated Test Equipment (ATE), including integrated pin electronics. Applications Engineering works between customers and the Design, Product, and Quality Engineering teams. The team develops customer guides, evaluation boards and software, and leads technical debugging when customer systems encounter problems. This experienced engineer will provide deep product and ATE knowledge, lead challenging customer escalations, and collaborate across functions to develop solutions. The role combines laboratory work with communicating findings to the people who need to act on them.

Requirements

Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
10+ years of professional experience in applications, test, product, or systems engineering on semiconductor products.
Extensive hands-on experience with bench equipment, including oscilloscopes, SMUs, supplies, AWGs, and probing techniques, with the ability to recognize when the test setup is causing a problem.
Strong analog and mixed-signal circuit understanding, including transistor-level behavior when required for debugging.
A track record of leading ambiguous, multi-variable engineering investigations to a defensible conclusion.
Clear communication skills and the ability to explain technical findings to engineers and managers.

Nice To Haves

Experience in semiconductor test, ATE, measurement equipment, or high-performance instrumentation.
Experience in analog or mixed-signal design or transistor-level debugging.
Experience across the silicon lifecycle, from validation, characterization, and design verification through quality and mass-production ramp.
Exposure to PCB design review and bring-up, or experience using tools such as Altium or Allegro.
Familiarity with SPICE simulation tools such as LTspice or PSpice.
Experience using programming languages or tools for test automation and data analysis, such as Python, C, JMP, or Excel.

Responsibilities

Lead complex customer and system-level investigations by defining problems, reproducing them in the laboratory, driving root-cause analysis with Design, Product, and Quality Engineering, and closing the loop with customers.
Generate technical documentation for ElevATE products, including datasheets, product guides, application notes, and other integration materials.
Interface with internal engineering teams to help bring new products from initial concept through production release.
Perform bench testing and analysis to support customer inquiries and troubleshooting.
Reproduce customer observations and provide technical guidance on using ElevATE parts.
Analyze the competitive landscape and identify differentiation for ElevATE IC products.
Support failure, quality, and reliability analysis in conjunction with the operations team.
Coordinate with the sales team throughout the sales process, including product recommendations for new customer designs and on-site customer visits to promote ElevATE IC products.