Product Software Support - Semiconductor Equipment Software

Project Overview and Responsibilities

We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Product Software Support Lead/Engineer with 5+ years of experience in supporting mission-critical software applications for semiconductor equipment and manufacturing environments. The ideal candidate should possess strong expertise in product software support, troubleshooting, log analysis, semiconductor equipment workflows, fab automation interfaces, and customer-facing issue resolution.

This role is responsible for providing L2/L3 support for semiconductor equipment software deployed at customer fabrication facilities, ensuring high system availability, rapid incident resolution, and minimal production downtime. The candidate will work closely with customers, field service engineers, product development teams, and global stakeholders to analyze complex software issues, perform root cause analysis, coordinate defect fixes, and support software releases and upgrades.

The position requires hands-on experience with semiconductor industry standards and technologies such as SECS/GEM, GEM300, MES integration, equipment automation, and factory host communication, along with knowledge of software debugging, database troubleshooting, and diagnostic tools.

The successful candidate will serve as a technical bridge between customer operations, engineering teams, and product management, ensuring reliable operation of semiconductor manufacturing equipment while driving continuous improvement in support processes, system stability, and customer satisfaction

Key Responsibilities

• Customer software support: Provide on-site and remote support for equipment software issues, production interruptions, alarms, communication failures, recipe-related problems, configuration errors, and performance degradation.
• Incident diagnosis and recovery: Triage incidents by business and production impact; collect logs and system evidence; reproduce problems where practical; identify the failing software, interface, configuration, or operating condition; and drive recovery within agreed priorities.
• Root cause and prevention: Perform structured root-cause analysis, document technical findings, recommend corrective and preventive actions, and verify that fixes eliminate recurrence without introducing production risk.
• Software deployment and change control: Plan and support controlled installation, upgrade, patch, rollback, parameter, and configuration activities. Confirm prerequisites, backups, approvals, release notes, validation steps, and post-change monitoring.
• Equipment integration: Support software interfaces among equipment control systems, factory host systems, databases, networks, peripheral devices, and manufacturing execution environments. Work with customer teams to isolate interface and protocol issues.
• Escalation management: Prepare complete escalation packages with timeline, impact, evidence, reproduction steps, actions taken, and clear engineering questions. Coordinate with product owners and development teams through resolution.
• Customer communication: Provide clear status updates during incidents, explain technical findings in practical terms, set realistic next actions, and maintain professional communication in high-pressure production situations.
• Knowledge and documentation: Create and maintain troubleshooting guides, known-error records, installation procedures, release notes, service reports, and lessons learned. Share knowledge with field engineers and support colleagues.
• Product improvement: Analyse recurring defects and service trends, identify reliability or usability improvements, and provide field feedback to engineering and quality teams.
• Operational discipline: Follow customer fab rules, information-security requirements, EHS procedures, quality processes, access controls, and change and escalation standards.

Attractive Points

• Advanced Technology: Opportunity to work on cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing technologies used by leading global semiconductor manufacturers.
• Development experience: Work on complex, high-performance software running on mission-critical manufacturing equipment.
• Global environment: Collaborate with global engineering teams and industry experts in a highly innovative environment.
• Diverse career paths: Career growth opportunities in both technical specialist and leadership tracks.

■ Must Have

• Bachelor degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Electronics, Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics, Automation, or a closely related discipline.
• Programming skills in C, C++ and Java
• Experience working in Linux-based development environments.
• Knowledge and practical experience with relational databases (RDBMS) such as PostgreSQL
• Proficiency in Japanese language (JLPT N3/N2/N1) & English (spoken and written) is required
• Mandarin Chinese proficiency (spoken and written) is also required to support interactions with local Taiwan customers, service teams, and operational stakeholders.
• Relevant experience in software support, application support, product support, systems engineering, equipment automation, or production-critical technical operations.
• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot complex issues using logs, system behaviour, configuration history, network evidence, and controlled testing.
• Sound understanding of software installation, upgrades, patching, configuration, backup, recovery, and change validation.
• Strong ownership of incidents from initial triage through recovery, root cause, documentation, and closure.
• Ability to work effectively with customers, field engineers, software developers, product teams, and suppliers across cultures and time zones.
• Willingness to work at customer sites, enter controlled fab environments, travel to assigned service locations, and support urgent production issues outside normal hours when assigned.
• Good analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, for preparing technical documentation, incident reports, RCA reports, status updates, presentations, and customer communications.

■ Good to Have

• Experience supporting semiconductor, industrial automation, lithography, deposition, inspection, metrology, or other capital equipment.
• Knowledge of equipment host communication and factory integration standards such as SECS GEM, GEM300, OPC, or comparable industrial protocols.
• Experience with ticketing systems, defect tracking, service knowledge bases, and formal incident or problem management practices.
• Hands-on capability with SQL, PowerShell, Python, shell scripting, log-analysis tools, or monitoring platforms.

■ Language Skill

• English – Mandatory
• Japanese – Mandatory N3 or higher

■ Educational Qualification

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electronics, Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics, Information Technology, or a related discipline.

■ Work Location

Taiwan.

The role may require regular presence at customer fabs, project locations, and company service facilities.

■ Mode of Work

• Work may involve cleanroom entry, use of required protective clothing, and compliance with customer-specific safety and security rules.
• Scheduled on-call, shift, weekend, holiday, or after-hours support may be required according to customer production needs and team rotation.
• Domestic travel is expected; occasional international travel for training, product introduction, or technical coordination may be required.