Principal Engineer, Equipment Engineering

Summary

Join Western Digital as a Principal Equipment Engineer and leverage your expertise in equipment engineering to drive innovation in data storage. You will be responsible for the specification, project management, design review, and qualification testing of new tools. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to improve equipment reliability, throughput, and process capability. Conduct root cause analysis for equipment-related issues and implement corrective actions. Maintain detailed documentation and provide training on maintenance and troubleshooting. Contribute to continuous improvement programs and stay updated on new equipment and process technologies. This role requires a strong background in equipment engineering, proven experience in wet etch, plating, or CMP process equipment, and excellent communication and project management skills.

Requirements

• Have at least 8 years’ experience with a B.S. or at least 6 years’ experience with an M.S. degree and a successful record of accomplishment in equipment design and sustaining experience
• Degrees must be in electrical, mechanical, or related Engineering or physical science
• Demonstrate technical capability and positive results in Wet Etch, Plating, or CMP process equipment
• Be a strong problem solver, organized and quality driven
• Have in-depth understanding and practice of equipment design and testing (or sustaining), operations, documentation, maintenance, as well as good understanding of wafer level processes and cleanroom requirements
• Possess excellent written and verbal communication skills, strong project management and people skills, and be able to act as an active team leader or cross-functional team member to provide the best results to the teams and company
• Know how to effectively work with technicians and be able to clearly transfer technical knowledge and instructions in an accessible manner
• Have PC skills including JMP, MS Excel, Project, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook

Responsibilities

• Take ownership of the new equipment specification, technical negotiation with vendors, design and documentation review, tool installation, and qualification testing and documentation. Ensure project is on schedule, and at the same time deliver with the highest quality by proactively identifying and correcting capability, reliability and Maintenance issues early on. Generate accurate and detailed documentation for facility, maintenance, stores and process owners
• Lead or be an active team member to drive continuous improvement programs to improve equipment performance and reliability, maximize Mean Productive Time Between Failure (MTBF), and Operational Uptime (AOU), and minimize Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)
• Provide accurate and detailed documentation as well as training in basic and advanced maintenance and troubleshooting skills along with established best maintenance and safe practices. Practice gage R&R on critical equipment and consumable related measurements. Monitor and follow through for continuous improvement opportunities across all shifts
• Review and evaluate tool and spare parts related inputs from Maintenance organizations. Provide timely response, proposed timeline and sound actions for continuous improvement opportunities
• Respond to scrapped wafers that occur due to equipment or maintenance related incidences. Review, analyze and investigate equipment related scraps and provide sound root cause analysis and timely effective corrective actions
• Define and review regularly the minimum (reorder) and maximum spares quantities on critical and long lead items to ensure inventories are at the correct level to support equipment maintenance and repair effort. Work with store and vendor to ensure in-coming parts meet form, fit, functional and other quality requirements. Generate parts and consumables specifications, checklist and drawings as needed
• Establish, review regularly, and respond to SPC out of control situation for equipment parameters. Additionally, define jointly with process team to set-up and test process and equipment alarm parameters at the tool. Monitor tool alarm logs regularly and follow through for proactive actions and continuous improvement opportunities. Drive tool matching and yield improvement through design and engineering improvements
• Keep track of the down tool situation and provide verbal and written instructions to support teams upon request. Respond to down tool escalation calls upon request by Production and Maintenance organizations. Take an active and leading role in bringing the down tool up efficiently and effectively. Observe for learning and improvement opportunities across all functions. Follow through with the improvement actions
• Keep track and learn the applicable new equipment and process technologies for potential wafer fab applications and implementations

Preferred Qualifications

Have CAD and geometric tolerance experience

Benefits

• Paid vacation time
• Paid sick leave
• Medical/dental/vision insurance
• Life, accident and disability insurance
• Tax-advantaged flexible spending and health savings accounts
• Employee assistance program
• Other voluntary benefit programs such as supplemental life and AD&D, legal plan, pet insurance, critical illness, accident and hospital indemnity
• Tuition reimbursement
• Transit
• The Applause Program
• Employee stock purchase plan
• The Western Digital Savings 401(k) Plan
• Short-Term Incentive (STI) Plan, which provides incentive awards based on Company and individual performance
• Annual Long-Term Incentive (LTI) program, which consists of restricted stock units (RSUs) or cash equivalents
• RSU awards are also available to eligible new hires, subject to Western Digital’s Standard Terms and Conditions for Restricted Stock Unit Awards