Software Engineer 3

Onto Innovation•Baltimore, MD

23h•Onsite

About The Position

We are seeking a Software Engineer to join the Inspection Business Unit (IBU), developing advanced inspection platforms used in semiconductor manufacturing. This role is well suited for engineers early in their career who are excited to work on complex, real‑world systems that tightly integrate optics, mechanics, electronics, and software. Success in this role requires the ability to develop and maintain a clear system‑level mental model of a sophisticated inspection platform—and to move fluidly between high‑level architecture and detailed technical investigation when problems arise. As AI coding tools increasingly assist with code generation and refactoring, this role emphasizes systems reasoning, problem decomposition, and technical judgment: understanding customer problems, identifying where they live in the system, and mapping them to effective engineering solutions.

Requirements

Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
0–5 years of relevant experience (including internships, co‑ops, or research).
Demonstrated ability to reason about systems at multiple levels of abstraction—from high‑level architecture to implementation details.
Strong analytical, problem‑solving, and communication skills.
Experience or coursework in at least one compiled or production language such as C/C++, C#, or Java.
Familiarity with AI coding tools (e.g., Copilot, etc.).
Familiarity with Agile development practices and modern version control workflows.

Nice To Haves

Exposure to semiconductor inspection, machine vision, robotics, or hardware‑software co‑designed systems.
Experience diagnosing issues that span multiple subsystems (e.g., optics, electronics, firmware, and application software).
Familiarity with embedded systems, hardware communication protocols, and/or real‑time constraints.
Experience or coursework in a numerically focused environment such as Python or MATLAB, including linear algebra, image processing, and/or machine learning libraries.
Exposure to multi‑threaded software, performance debugging, or data‑intensive systems.

Responsibilities

Build and continuously refine an understanding of the full inspection platform, including optics, motion systems, electronics, image acquisition, and the software stack.
Translate customer issues and application requirements into well‑defined engineering tasks by reasoning across subsystem boundaries.
Move effectively between system‑level architecture and detailed technical areas such as algorithms, data flow, performance, hardware interfaces, GPUs, databases, and Ux's.
Participate in New Product Development (NPD) alongside hardware, applications, and systems engineers, as well as technical project and product management partners.
Develop and integrate software based off of product and customer requirements using industry best practices, image processing, computer vision and mathematics.
Write, test, debug, and maintain production software with a focus on reliability, performance, and scalability.
Participate in requirements analysis, software design, implementation, and test planning.
Engage in design and code reviews with software and systems engineering peers.
Use AI coding agents to accelerate implementation while maintaining ownership of design decisions, architecture, and code quality.
Stay current with academic and industry developments in machine vision inspection, image processing, and AI‑assisted software development.
Document software designs, system‑level reasoning, and troubleshooting approaches.
Collaborate closely with teammates across disciplines; at more experienced levels, Contribute to improvements in development workflows, tooling, and engineering practices, including responsible use of AI‑assisted tools.