Technical Support Manager (Central Technical Function)

KLA•Phoenix, AZ

3d•Onsite

About The Position

The KLA Services team headquartered in Milpitas, CA is our service organization that consists of Service Sales and Marketing, Spares Supply Chain management, Field Operations, Engineering, Product Training, and Technical Support. The KLA Services organization partners with our field teams and customers in all business sectors to maintain the high performance and productivity of our products through a flexible portfolio of services. Our comprehensive services include: proactive management of tools to identify and improve performance; expertise in optics, image processing and motion control with worldwide service engineers, 24/7 technical support teams and knowledge management systems; and an extensive parts network to ensure worldwide availability of parts. The successful candidate owns the worldwide operational health of two distinct technology domains served by one operating model: case management, escalation governance, TSE utilization, training and certification, supplier engagement, and field engagement. Direct ownership covers the US and Europe TSE bench; partnership accountability extends to the Asia TSM and the global TSE workforce. The role reports to the Director of PSO Operational Excellence and partners daily with the Product Managers, Engineering counterparts, field partners, and customers.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree or higher in a related filed or equivalent combination of relevant education and experience
6 plus years of related experience with proven ability to lead including 2 years plug of management experience
6+ years of experience in semiconductor capital-equipment service operations, with at least 3 years in a management role owning a multi-region technical support team
Demonstrated track record running an L1–L4 escalation governance model at a Tier-1 fab customer (TSMC, Intel, Samsung, Hynix, Micron, or equivalent)
Workforce planning and hiring experience across multiple regions, including certification program ownership and managing distributed teams operating across multiple time zones.
Direct executive communication experience at the VP+ level

Nice To Haves

Prior CPG, handler, or loadport experience inside KLA or at a Tier-1 supplier (Rorze, Yaskawa, Kawasaki, Sinfonia, KRI, or equivalent)
Familiarity with the Product Development Lifecycle operating model, including the handoff between Engineering to Services Support.
Demonstrated track record of using the latest technology — including AI and agentic tooling — to scale a service team's capacity without scaling its headcount proportionally; concrete examples preferred (deployed AI-assisted troubleshooting, knowledge retrieval, log-analysis copilots, or similar tools in a production service operation)
A leadership style that is candid about performance and equally invested in the people
Experience presenting service operations strategy and performance to executives at the VP, EVP, or President level
Multilingual capability — Mandarin, Korean, or Japanese would be a plus
Comfort with Snowflake, Power BI, or equivalent data tooling; ability to partner with a data-science team on TSE utilization analytics, escalation analytics, and Cost-of-Service measurement
Advanced degree (MS or MBA) in Engineering, Operations Management, or related field
Bachelor's degree in Engineering (Mechanical, Electrical, Industrial, or related field) or equivalent professional service-operations experience

Responsibilities

Owning the L1–L4 escalation governance for CPG handlers and Server platforms across all regions, with explicit US/EU ownership and Asia partnership accountability
Driving TSE utilization toward the defined target and driving Field service engineer's Self-Sufficiency.
Co-owning supplier-management posture with the SSO seat for the full handler vendor portfolio (e.g, Rorze, Yaskawa, Kawasaki, Sinfonia, TDK, KRI, Asyst Brooks)
Leading the worldwide TSE hiring pipeline, the certification program across the full handler model lineage, and the structured knowledge-share cadence across the bench.
Applying the latest service-engineering technology — including AI-assisted log analysis, knowledge retrieval, and agentic troubleshooting — to amplify each TSE's effective output. The bench will not double in size; the manager who succeeds in this seat is the one who finds the leverage that scales the team
Investing visibly in the people on the bench — building trust, developing careers, and protecting team bandwidth as deliberately as managing cases.
Executive engagement with the VP, EVP, and President levels on quarterly cadence and reviews
Direct customer engagement with Service Directors, Product Support Directors, and Tier-1 fab leadership