Opto-Mechanical Engineer

Who We Are

Applied Materials is the global leader in materials science and engineering solutions that are at the foundation of virtually every new semiconductor chip and advanced display in the world. The equipment that we create and service is essential to advancing AI and accelerating the commercialization of next-generation semiconductor chips. Join us and push the boundaries of materials science and engineering in a company at the foundation of the electronics industry. The work we do together advances the world’s technology.

What We Offer

Salary: $128,000.00 - $176,000.00 Location: Portland,OR You’ll benefit from a supportive work culture that encourages you to learn, develop, and grow your career as you take on challenges and drive innovative solutions for our customers. We empower our team to push the boundaries of what is possible—while learning every day in a supportive leading global company. Visit our Careers website to learn more. At Applied Materials, we care about the health and wellbeing of our employees. We’re committed to providing programs and support that encourage personal and professional growth and care for you at work, at home, or wherever you may go. Learn more about our benefits.

As a Mechanical Engineer, you’ll leverage your strong foundation in physics, mathematics, and materials science to process and resolve mechanical problems, design and implement custom mechanical tooling and associated processes, and enable the handling, assembly, and disassembly of parts, components, sub-assemblies, and final assemblies throughout the product life cycle. You'll be responsible for designing, developing, and modifying mechanical engineering layouts, schematics, and specifications. You will oversee manufacturing and installation processes, ensuring adherence to industry standards and regulations-- and you'll coordinate the procurement and assembly of mechanical components and equipment for design projects, identifying sources of critical parts and subsystems to resolve technical issues.

Role Responsibilities

• Lead and/or design the opto-mechanical solution of complex subsystems.
• Identify and troubleshoot a wide range of complex mechanical problems with limited to no supervision
• Develop detailed component and assembly drawings to meet tight tolerancing requirements across production and prototype configurations.
• Perform mechanical analyses to ensure performance stability under operational and environmental conditions.
• Design sub-assemblies to achieve sub-micron alignment and long-term stability.
• Define and optimize sub-assemblies to maintain system performance across required temperature operating ranges.
• Define and own the opto-mechanical interface between optical, mechanical, and electrical subsystems.
• Lead integration and alignment activities for prototype and production optical systems.
• Develop alignment procedures, optical bench setups, and calibration workflows
• Define, coordinate, perform and generate engineering test reports; specify and review engineering documentation; specify or perform complex engineering analysis
• Develop, design, or modify engineering layouts, schematics, or drawings/specifications of complex scope
• Design for manufacturability and HVM, including the development of key suppliers.
• Communicate with internal and external customers regarding a wide range of complex mechanical issues for specific projects
• Generate product specificationsand drive product design lifecycle.
• Serve as a technical lead or subject matter expert on cross-functional program teams, communicating design status, risks, and trade-offs clearly to program management and stakeholders.

Minimun Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree
• 5+ years of experience

Additional Qualifications

• Mechanical: Sound material selection judgment, including intuition for thermal expansion behavior and appropriate tolerance ratios.
• Demonstrated ability to design for strength, rigidity, cost and manufacturability against a stated application requirement, and to recognize manufacturability risk in complex designs.
• Hands‑on tooling and jig design with a usability bias, suited to repetitive assembly or alignment tasks in volume manufacturing.
• Experience working directly with machine shops.
• Experience with electronics packaging Experience with liquid cooling systems, pneumatics and fittings.
• Fluency in geometric dimensioning and tolerancing, and in statistical as well as worst‑case tolerance analysis.
• Experience designing for precision mounting, positioning, pointing and long‑term stability of optical components.
• Analysis and Simulation: Hands‑on proficiency with finite element analysis for structural, thermal, modal or fluid problems, with evidence of correlating models to measured hardware.
• Structural‑Thermal‑Optical Performance analysis experience — propagating predicted mechanical or thermal deformation into optical performance, for example by fitting deformed surfaces to Zernike terms and returning them to the optical model.
• Optical: Working familiarity with wavefront theory.
• Able to operate a commercial interferometer for optical characterization using an existing recipe or procedure, and to distinguish conceptually between interferometer types and their appropriate applications.
• Familiarity with reference flats, spheres and prisms.
• Advanced practical experience adapting common optical measurement tooling: power and energy probes, cameras, profilers, stages and encoders, alignment telescopes and position‑sensitive detectors.
• Experience setting up and using waveform generators, oscilloscopes, multimeters and power supplies.
• Expert operation of a commercial optical inspection microscope.
• Able to interpret optical drawings, and to interpret or modify an existing optical model to test new input/output specifications or operating conditions.
• Laser and imaging alignment technique and intuition across millimeter to nanometer scales.
• Adept at improvising opto‑mechanical mounting, measurement, reference and alignment tooling from off‑the‑shelf components.
• Loose‑optic handling, inspection and cleaning; fiber handling, inspection, cleaning and integration.
• Experience safely operating Class 4 lasers
• Software and Controls: Comfortable interpreting, reviewing, lightly editing and extending existing code to tune performance or adapt it to a new use case.
• Able to perform regression testing and contribute to a software feedback and improvement cycle.

Preferred Qualifications

• Knowledge of the Applied Materials product life cycle, including prototyping, packaging, material selection and manufacturing methods
• Measurement system analysis practice: gauge repeatability and reproducibility, uncertainty budgeting, calibration and traceability.
• Highly adept at rapidly prototyping controls or analysis applications in Python, with change management in a Git‑style repository.
• Able to develop requirements and specifications for a software utility and coordinate with stakeholders to bring it to production.
• From‑scratch automation of new or legacy laboratory equipment, across interfaces from serial through to compiled‑language integration.
• Design for reliability practice: failure mode analysis, reliability prediction, accelerated life or stress testing.
• Experience transferring designs to manufacturing and supporting remotely and on site.

Additional Information

• Time Type: Full time
• Employee Type: Assignee / Regular
• Travel: Yes, 10% of the Time
• Relocation Eligible: Yes

Applied Materials is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, citizenship, ancestry, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, veteran or military status, or any other basis prohibited by law.

In addition, Applied endeavors to make our careers site accessible to all users.

If you would like to contact us regarding accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process, please contact us via e-mail at View email address on click.appcast.io, or by calling our HR Direct Help Line at View phone number on click.appcast.io, option 1, and following the prompts to speak to an HR Advisor. This contact is for accommodation requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.