Senior Director of Engineering - Analyzer Product Group

Job Description: Senior Director of Engineering – Analyzer Group

Location: Santa Clara, CA (Onsite)
Reports to: SVP, Engineering
Org: Engineering / Analyzer Development

The Opportunity

Picarro is seeking a Senior Director of Engineering to lead the Analyzer Group, responsible for engineering delivery across current analyzer products and next-generation analyzer platforms. This role owns end-to-end execution across hardware, firmware, software, systems integration, reliability, and manufacturability, and partners closely with R&D and platform leaders to bring differentiated CRDS-based products to market.

The ideal candidate is a high-ownership engineering leader with deep technical credibility and exceptional operational rigor—someone who builds predictable delivery, drives cross-functional alignment, and sets a culture of professionalism, accountability, and execution excellence.

Scope of Responsibility

• Lead engineering for the Analyzer portfolio including next-gen platform and products built on that platform.
• Own delivery of key analyzer programs across development, sustaining, and quality.
• Drive cross-team execution for customer escalations, including 8D analyses and Corrective Action Requests (CARs) tied to field issues.
• Partner with R&D leaders on critical technology initiatives, including optical feedback CRDS development, ensuring engineering execution is aligned with research direction and productization requirements.

Key Responsibilities

1) End-to-End Program Execution & Predictable Delivery

• Establish and maintain comprehensive, integrated project plans that cover hardware, firmware, and software with clear milestones, dependencies, resourcing, and risk burndown.
• Drive weekly operating cadence: status, risks, decision logs, and mitigation plans; ensure stakeholders have high visibility into progress and blockers.
• Maintain a high say–do standard: commitments are credible, tracked, and delivered; missed commitments trigger root-cause analysis and plan correction.

2) Technical Leadership & Decision Quality

• Provide strong technical leadership across analyzer architecture and design tradeoffs; drive decisions that are necessary, validated, and value-based, avoiding churn and unnecessary redesign.
• Implement a decision-making framework that ensures changes are justified by customer value, reliability, manufacturability, serviceability, or schedule risk reduction.
• Ensure design changes (e.g., subsystem replacements) have clear milestone definitions, qualification plans, and outputs (ECO, test reports, validation results).

3) Customer Issue Management: 8D / CAR Ownership

• Own engineering response for customer escalations requiring 8D and CAR closure, driving cross-functional coordination across engineering, operations, quality, and suppliers.
• Ensure timely root cause identification, containment, corrective actions, verification, and customer-ready reporting—particularly for strategic accounts (e.g., Brooks-class programs).

4) People Leadership, Culture & Professionalism

• Build and lead a high-performing organization: hire, develop, coach, and retain strong managers and technical leaders.
• Set clear expectations for professional conduct: respectful collaboration, constructive technical debate, reliable meeting participation, and strong communication norms.
• Address performance and behavior issues promptly and directly; create a culture of ownership, quality, and teamwork.

5) Resource, Budget, and External Partner Management

• Manage internal/external resources (including consultants) to maximize impact; ensure utilization aligns to the plan and outcomes.
• Track spend, forecast accurately, and manage within budget constraints; report variances early with corrective actions.

6) Engineering Excellence: Quality, Reliability, DFM/DFS

• Drive engineering best practices across analyzer development, including DFM (manufacturability), DFS (serviceability), reliability, and scalability.
• Establish a culture where verification/validation occurs at each step and quality is engineered in—not inspected in.

Required Skills &