Senior Metal and Coating Engineer

About Us

SMART Photonics is a TIER 1 foundry and development partner in integrated photonics, committed to creating innovative products that enhance lives. We enable our customers by delivering high-performance photonic integrated circuits at industrial scale. To support our continued growth and increasing customer expectations, we are seeking a Senior Optical Coating and Metallization Engineer with deep semiconductor industry experience.

Role Overview
As a Senior Optical Coating and Metallization Engineer, you will take technical ownership of metallization and optical coating processes within the wafer fab, with a strong focus on metal PVD tooling and process integration. You bring multiple years of experience in the semiconductor or photonics industry and operate as a senior technical authority who can define direction, align stakeholders, and drive sustainable improvements.

A key aspect of this role is building, maintaining, and owning a functional metallization-related test framework that reflects real customer use cases. This includes defining meaningful metrics, ensuring test robustness, and using data to demonstrate process capability, stability, and continuous improvement.

Success in this role requires close collaboration with many departments that have their own priorities and workloads. You will need to clearly understand what you require from others, align this with their objectives, and influence progress without formal authority, enabling the organization to collectively deliver on metallization performance, yield, and reliability.

Reporting to the Cluster Lead for Wet-Etch, Back-End, and Metal, you will act as a senior contributor and technical leader in improving process stability, yield, and cost-efficiency, while safeguarding long-term manufacturability and customer satisfaction.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own and lead metallization and optical coating processes, with a strong focus on PVD-based metal deposition and related vacuum technologies.

• Act as the senior technical expert for metallization tools, processes, and integration within the wafer fab.

• Design, build, qualify, and sustain functional metallization tests that reflect customer expectations and product use, including defining relevant metrics and dashboards.

• Drive process development, optimization, and troubleshooting using structured methodologies such as DoE, SPC, FMEA, and root-cause analysis.

• Lead improvements in process stability, yield, throughput, and cost, balancing short-term operational needs with long-term robustness.

• Collaborate closely with Test & Measurement, Back-End, Operations, Device Engineering, and other stakeholders to ensure alignment and execution.

• Influence and coordinate cross-functional activities by clearly defining needs, priorities, and expected outcomes, while respecting existing workloads and constraints.

• Provide senior-level technical support for metallization-related excursions, customer issues, and tool or process changes.

• Contribute to roadmap definition and strategic decisions related to metallization capability, tooling, and test infrastructure.

• Master’s or PhD in Materials Science, Applied Physics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.

• On top of academic experience, extensive years in the semiconductor and/or photonics industry, with a clear senior-level track record.

• Deep hands-on experience with metallization and optical coating processes, including PVD, vacuum technology, and related toolsets.

• Experience working with metallization tools, process integration, and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES).

• Proven success in driving process improvements using statistical and experimental methods such as DoE, SPC, and FMEA.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, combined with a pragmatic, hands-on mindset.

• Demonstrated ability to collaborate across disciplines and influence outcomes without direct authority.

• Clear communication skills and the ability to translate technical needs into actionable requests for diverse stakeholders.

What We Offer
We offer a senior technical role with real ownership and influence, shaped around your strengths, experience, and ambitions. At SMART Photonics, we welcome people as they are and actively encourage a diverse and inclusive working environment, believing that different perspectives strengthen our technology and our teams. Your role is not fixed to a narrow box; it is built around what you bring and how you can make the most impact. You will work in close partnership with your manager, whose role is to support you in developing, challenging, and becoming the best version of yourself, both technically and professionally.