Principal Associate Engineer - Reliability Lab

Introduction

As a Principal Associate Engineer, Reliability Lab, you will lead daily lab execution and ensure reliability test equipment is ready, available, and compliant to support semiconductor qualification, monitoring, change requests, and line-issue investigations. This role owns equipment uptime, preventive and corrective maintenance, critical tool recovery, vendor coordination, and lab KPIs while ensuring safe, accurate, and compliant test execution. You will also guide engineers, technicians, and stakeholders to drive continuous improvement in lab operations, equipment performance, and test quality.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead daily reliability lab operations to ensure safe, accurate, traceable, and on-time test execution.

• Prioritize reliability test requests for qualification, monitoring, change requests, customer support, and line-issue investigations.

• Own equipment uptime through preventive maintenance, corrective maintenance, calibration readiness, spare-parts planning, and tool health monitoring.

• Lead troubleshooting, fault recovery, RCA, and CAPA for equipment issues, test setup problems, invalid data, and recurring failures.

• Coordinate vendors for service support, repair activities, parts replacement, escalation, and post-service verification.

• Maintain QMS, audit, EHS, ESD, 6S, calibration, documentation, and lab-control compliance.

• Track and report key equipment and lab KPIs, including uptime, downtime, utilization, MTBF, MTTR, PM completion, calibration completion, and repeat faults.

• Drive continuous improvement to improve equipment availability, test cycle time, maintenance effectiveness, data integrity, and lab productivity.

• Coach and guide engineers, technicians, and new hires on equipment operation, maintenance, troubleshooting, documentation, and safe lab practices.

• Collaborate with Reliability Engineering, Quality, Equipment, Facilities, Manufacturing, Planning, and vendors to resolve issues and improve lab performance.

Qualifications & Experience

• Diploma in Electrical, Electronics, Materials Engineering, or a related discipline.

• Minimum 4 years of relevant experience in semiconductor or reliability lab operations, test equipment, equipment maintenance, or equipment engineering.

• Strong hands-on experience with reliability test equipment, environmental test systems, probers, testers, burn-in systems, chambers, ovens, or automated lab/manufacturing tools.

• Proven ability to lead equipment troubleshooting, PM/CM activities, fault recovery, restart verification, and maintenance documentation.

• Experience coordinating vendors, service engineers, external repair providers, spare parts, service visits, quotations, and escalations.

• Working knowledge of reliability testing, qualification support, change requests, line-issue support, QMS, audit readiness, calibration, ESD, 6S, and safety requirements.

• Able to guide technicians, Associate Engineers, and cross-functional stakeholders with clear technical communication and documentation.

Preferred

• Experience in an accredited labor regulated manufacturing environment.

• Hands-on exposure to wafer-, package-, or product-level reliability equipment such as probers, testers, SMU systems, Qualitau platforms, burn-in systems, ovens, chambers, HAST/THB, temperature cycling, or pre-conditioning tools.

• Familiarity with JEDEC, ISO/IEC 17025 concepts, ISO 9001, IATF 16949, ESD, calibration, and audit requirements.

• Experience managing vendor scorecards, service reviews, recurring fault escalation, repair quotations, or technical reviews.

• Certification or training in Lean Six Sigma, 8D, RCA, FMEA, equipment maintenance, calibration, ESD, safety, reliability engineering, or maintenance/reliability programs is an advantage.