Job Summary:
Onto Innovation is a leader in semiconductor technologies, and they are seeking a Lead AI Engineer to drive AI-powered solutions for semiconductor equipment operations. This hands-on leadership role involves defining AI strategies, mentoring a team, and integrating AI solutions into production environments.
Responsibilities:
• Define the AI strategy and architecture for integrating machine learning into core engineering and manufacturing processes.
• Partner with tool, process, and applications engineers to map as-is processes and define a to-be AI/automation architecture and deliver measurable outcomes.
• Ship agentic assistants for use-cases. Stand up LLM + RAG + tool integrations (via MCP servers) that help engineers accelerate tool operation/setup/maintenance and explain trade-offs, grounded in internal docs, logs, and historical inspection outcomes.
• Lead projects across diverse areas: Predictive maintenance for tool health monitoring and failure detection. Computer vision for wafer defect detection, segmentation, and classification. LLM-based engineering assistants using RAG and MCP agents to make internal knowledge more accessible. Process optimization & yield improvement through data-driven insights and parameter tuning. Simulation and digital twins to model process behaviors and accelerate R&D.
• Build retrieval-augmented AI assistants to query internal knowledge bases, tools, and logs.
• Architect robust pipelines for data ingestion, labeling, storage, and retrieval across massive multi-modal datasets (images, telemetry, recipes, logs).
• Stand up scalable MLOps infrastructure: model registries, monitoring, evaluation, deployment, and governance.
• Hire, mentor, and manage a team of 3 engineers focused on LLM/Agents, CV/ML, and MLOps/Data.
• Work cross-functionally to integrate AI solutions into production environments safely and securely.
Qualifications:
Required:
• 5+ years applied ML/AI experience, with 3+ years in a technical leadership role.
• Hands-on expertise with at least two of the following domains: Large Language Models - RAG, fine-tuning, agent frameworks, prompt optimization; Predictive Modeling - tool failure prediction, anomaly detection, time-series analysis; Computer Vision - defect detection, segmentation, or SEM/optical imaging.
• Strong background in ML systems architecture and production deployment.
• Advanced Python proficiency: C++/CUDA familiarity is a plus.
• Experience with MLOps stacks: containers, CI/CD, Ray Serve/Triton, model registries (e.g., MLflow), and GPU optimization.
• Strong stakeholder collaboration skills and the ability to translate between engineering, operations, and leadership.
• Demonstrated success delivering AI-powered products into production.
Preferred:
• Familiarity with semiconductor manufacturing, inspection, or metrology.
• Understanding of fab interfaces and data connectivity (SECS/GEM, GEM300).
• Prior experience deploying digital twins or simulation-driven optimization.
• Knowledge of vector databases, retrieval pipelines, and hybrid search.
• Experience implementing safety, security, and IP protections for AI systems.
• Exposure to datasets or tools from KLA, ASML, Applied Materials, Onto, Nova, or similar inspection/metrology vendors.
Company:
Onto Innovation stands alone in process control with our unique perspective across the semiconductor value chain. Founded in 2019, the company is headquartered in Wilmington, USA, with a team of 1001-5000 employees. The company is currently Late Stage.