Sr. Staff Integration Engineer

About our group:

At Seagate our mission is to build the world’s best data storage devices.

The Advanced Transducer Development group is a global R&D organization that develops new recording head technologies to advance areal density and enable Seagate’s HDD (Hard Disk Drive) 4 year+ product roadmap. Our process team uses state-of-the-art wafer fabrication tools and cleanroom facilities to innovate and deliver leading-edge writers and read sensors.  With an emphasis on proving feasibility of new devices, processes and materials, we help build Seagate’s future time-to-market leadership.

If you are excited by innovative technology development, are naturally creative, and passionate about seeing ideas come to life then this could be a perfect fit for your research and development career.

About the role - you will:

• Lead the wafer fabrication of advanced head devices from concept through component-level feasibility demonstration.
• Work with the design team to translate device concepts into feasible, predictive test structures.
• Lay out wafer build plans, including CAD, process module, test requirements, and success criteria.
• Coordinate the work of unit process owners (deposition, litho, etch, CMP, wet process) to achieve equipment and process readiness for prototype wafer builds.
• Manage wafer supply for critical experiments through wafer starts, daily WIP decisions and ownership of daily velocity and moves parametrics.
• Ensure built devices meet design intent for geometry, performance, and reliability.
• Detect, pareto and solve new defect modes related to new process module integration.
• Explore new process techniques to define hardware paths needed for advanced capability and manufacturability.
• Manage experiments, projects and wafer tracking to deliver results to the designated schedule.
• Participate in transfers or promising new technologies to the product development engineering team.
• Contribute to Seagate’s IP portfolio in the form of invention disclosures, patents, trade secrets, peer-reviewed journal articles, and/or white papers.

About you:

• You are self-motivated, intellectually curious, adept at problem solving, and have a strong attention to detail.
• You are an honest and respectful team player, capable of working in strong partnership with a diverse global group of engineers and technicians.
• You are a well-organized multitasker, able to maintain focus on day-to-day wafer processing needs but also keep a cadence of longer-term development work.
• You are interested in and able to provide leadership through early-stage growth of a young but talented engineering team.
• You maintain thorough documentation of results and can clearly present and discuss them with other staff members in engineering and management forums.
• You have a track record of innovation and problem-solving, and regularly use external resources (vendors, conferences, literature) to inspire new ideas and directions.
• You are able and eager to work in a mix of clean room and laboratory environments.

Your experience includes:

• Bachelor's Degree in Materials Science, Electrical Engineering, Physics, Applied Physics, Chemistry or related science and 12+ years of experience, or Master’s degree in Materials Science, Electrical Engineering, Physics, Applied Physics, Chemistry or related science and 8+ years of experience, or PHD and 5+ years of experience or equivalent education and experience.
• Strong hands-on experience and in-depth understanding of wafer device builds in clean room or industrial wafer fab environments.
• Experience in device building, including CAD layout, device build flow simulation/visualization, WIP management and wafer-scale integration of new processes.
• Broad knowledge of conventional wafer unit processes (litho, deposition, etch, CMP, wet process) and prior device or process module ownership experience.
• Facility with a broad set of in-room characterization techniques including sheet film and device-level measurements (e.g. AFM, ellipsometry, 4pt probe, XRF, FIB, SEM, (S)TEM, etc).
• Knowledge of standard statistical experimentation methods including hypothesis testing, DOE