Optical Systems Engineer

To make electronics, you need chips, wafers, transistors, reticles, and... To make these, you must see, test and manufacture them at scale—faster and better than ever before. That's where KLA comes in. Whether you're early in your career or an experienced professional, you'll solve complex challenges, work alongside brilliant minds and help shape the future of technology.

Group/Division

The Semiconductor Products and Customers (Semi PC) business unit designs, builds and sells KLA’s product portfolio to help chip manufacturers meet high-quality standards for technologies like AI, data centers, automotive and electronic devices. Our inspection, metrology, and analytics systems detect and monitor defects across logic and memory chips, specialty semiconductors, wafers, reticles, advanced packaging, process equipment and materials. We also develop technologies for specialty processes, IC substrates, and PCB manufacturing, including etch and deposition, component inspection, and imaging and analytics. The LS-SWIFT division delivers high-throughput patterned wafer inspection systems that support advanced semiconductor manufacturing. Its mission is to provide industry-leading defect detection with optimal cost of ownership across a wide range of applications. LS systems enable precise, cost-effective inspection for cutting-edge process nodes, while SWIFT systems offer comprehensive macro inspection of all wafer surfaces—capabilities that are especially critical for advanced packaging, as well as logic, memory, and automotive applications.

What You'll Do

In this role, you will play a key part in advancing business priorities by delivering high-impact work across your area of expertise.

KLA is looking for an optical engineer in the LS-Swift group in Singapore to be part of the SWIFT engineering development team. The engineering team’s responsibility is to design, prototype, and test new hardware versions in support of the ongoing SWIFT product development roadmap.

This specific role is hardware prototyping and testing for light sources (1st priority) with some testing required for optics. Duties include vendor management (acquiring all hardware needed for testing), experiment/ hardware set up (includes working in a clean room environment), testing (collecting data), and data analysis and presentation. Python scripting is a key skill required for automated test set up and is required for this role.

It’s a plus if the candidate is also capable of simulating imagery and modeling image changes impact on the optical system budget. This requires math skills such as fourier transforms, convolutions, and pixel sampling.

Qualifications:

• The successful candidate will have at least a year of laboratory set ups where they have set up automated data collection.
• A Bachelors with 3 year experience, a Masters with 2 years, or a PhD with at least 1 year experience is required. The degree must be in optics or a related technical in a related field (i.e. physics, photonics, electrical).

Skills: Must Have:

• Start to finish data collection through analysis with electronic devices (i.e., camera images, computer captured electronic data such as a power meter)
• Matlab or Python at intermediate or better level
• Mechanical and electrical integration experience
• Ability and desire to work as part of a team
• Ability to work in a clean room
• Have optical training or equivalent work experience in the optical field and is required at a bare minimum to
• Experience processing and presenting data and conclusions
• Ability to clearly communicate

Skills: Nice to Have:

• Basic understanding of statistics for data analysis
• Ability to process image files to extract data
• Zemax modeling
• Experience modeling light sources
• Experience in vendor coordination/ ordering
• Ability to open and review CAD models

Minimum Qualifications

A Bachelors or masters degrees in optics or a related field (physics or optical devices) and 2 years work experience with optical hardware projects with some projects requiring Python scripting or equivalent software experience is required.

About KLA

We provide advanced inspection tools, metrology systems, process solutions, and computational analytics that make electronics possible, tackling complex challenges. From electron and photon optics to machine learning and data analytics, we seek perfection at the most fundamental level of matter in the universe. If you want to make electronics that push industries forward and make the world a better place, join us.

Use of AI Statement 

At KLA, our interviews seek to understand your individual skills, problem-solving approach and authentic thinking. To ensure a fair and consistent evaluation, the use of AI, recording tools or other technologies to generate, suggest or provide responses during interviews—whether virtual or in person—is not permitted unless explicitly approved in advance as part of a reasonable accommodation or invited by the interviewer. Use of these tools may interfere with our ability to evaluate your individual qualifications and affect your candidacy. KLA is committed to advancing innovation through responsible AI, and we value candidates who share this mindset.

We offer a competitive, family friendly total rewards package. We design our programs to reflect our commitment to an inclusive environment, while ensuring we provide benefits that meet the diverse needs of our employees.

KLA is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.