Senior Systems Engineer

Onto Innovation•Milpitas, CA

18d

About The Position

Onto Innovation is a process-control company serving the semiconductor industry with technologies spanning metrology, defect inspection, metal interconnect composition, factory analytics, and lithography for advanced packaging. Its products help customers address yield, device performance, quality, and reliability challenges. The Service Sustaining NPI Engineer owns service readiness and lifecycle support for released Onto products. Applying NPI discipline after product release, this role prepares CIPs, upgrades, FCOs, obsolescence mitigations, refurbishment programs, and major product changes for efficient global field deployment. The engineer is the Service technical owner working across Engineering, Field Service, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Product Management, and Service Marketing to improve tool uptime, reduce service costs, extend product life, and keep the installed base supportable. The position is accountable for service infrastructure for released products, including FRU strategy, service BOMs, retrofit and upgrade kits, service tooling, technical documentation, training plans, spare-parts readiness, and rollout plans. Success requires system-level troubleshooting, disciplined change management, hands-on service knowledge, and the ability to turn field issues and business opportunities into executable engineering programs.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Engineering or a related technical discipline.
At least 5 years of experience in semiconductor capital equipment, electronics, automation systems, or related industries.
Experience as a systems engineer, field service engineer, sustaining engineer, or product support engineer supporting complex semiconductor capital equipment.
Experience supporting released products through engineering changes, field retrofits, upgrades, or FCO rollouts.
Strong understanding of service BOMs, FRU strategy, spare-parts planning, and Field Service documentation.
Experience coordinating cross-functional technical projects involving Engineering, Field Service, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, and Product or Service Marketing.
Ability to translate field issues into structured problem statements, root-cause investigations, corrective actions, and measurable service improvements.
Working knowledge of ECO/ECN/SCR processes, configuration control, and product lifecycle management.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting the installed base of semiconductor capital equipment, field upgrades, retrofit kits, or customer-facing corrective actions.
Experience with cost-of-service reduction, obsolescence mitigation, second-source qualification, or repair and refurbishment programs.
Familiarity with service-readiness metrics such as MTTR, MTBF, spares availability, installation labor, preventive-maintenance duration, documentation readiness, and service cost.
Experience building rollout packages for global field teams, including kit plans, service procedures, training, and customer-communication inputs.
Practical hands-on experience with complex electromechanical, optical, automation, or metrology/inspection systems.

Responsibilities

Own service readiness for sustaining releases, ensuring documentation, training, spares, tooling, service BOMs, support infrastructure, and field validation are ready before deployment.
Represent Field Service requirements in engineering change and sustaining program reviews.
Capture and prioritize Voice of Service feedback from the global service organization.
Lead reliability and serviceability improvements using field performance data.
Identify ways to improve MTTR, preventive-maintenance duration, FRU replacement efficiency, and service-tooling effectiveness.
Coordinate root-cause investigations and preventive actions for recurring field issues.
Feed post-release lessons learned into DFS requirements and future product development.
Maintain released-product service infrastructure, including service BOMs, FRU definitions, recommended stocking lists, service tooling, troubleshooting content, PM/FRU procedures, training materials, and escalation paths.
Define field rollout requirements for CIPs, upgrades, retrofits, and FCOs, including kit content, labor assumptions, tooling, documentation, training, and regional deployment support.
Ensure documentation and training updates are released before major changes are deployed in the field.
Coordinate ECO/ECN/PCN readiness with service documentation, parts release, configuration control, and field communication.
Ensure field upgrade kits, retrofit plans, and service documentation are available before product release.
Track rollout effectiveness and incorporate field feedback into follow-on improvements.
Partner with Supply Chain and Planning to ensure spares, kits, and replacement components are available before customer rollout.
Analyze field reliability, service costs, escalation trends, spare consumption, and upgrade adoption to prioritize sustaining initiatives.
Support cost-of-service reduction through design improvements, second-source opportunities, repair strategies, tooling improvements, documentation and training improvements, and preventive-maintenance optimization.
Partner with Service Marketing and Product Management to assess upgrade business cases, installed-base applicability, customer value, and margin impact.