Specialist, AI Engineer

KLA is a global leader in diversified electronics for the semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem. Virtually every electronic device in the world is produced using our technologies. No laptop smartphone wearable device voice-controlled gadget flexible screen VR device or smart car would have made it into your hands without us. KLA invents systems and solutions for the manufacturing of wafers and reticles integrated circuits packaging printed circuit boards and flat panel displays. The innovative ideas and devices that are advancing humanity all begin with inspiration research and development. KLA focuses more than average on innovation and we invest 15% of sales back into R&D. Our expert teams of physicists engineers data scientists and problem-solvers work together with the worlds leading technology providers to accelerate the delivery of tomorrows electronic devices. Life here is exciting and our teams thrive on tackling really hard problems. There is never a dull moment with us.

With over 40 years of semiconductor process control experience chipmakers around the globe rely on KLA to ensure that their fabs ramp next-generation devices to volume production quickly and cost-effectively. Enabling the movement towards advanced chip design KLAs Global Products Group (GPG) which is responsible for creating all of KLAs metrology and inspection products is looking for the best and the brightest research scientist software engineers application development engineers and senior product technology process engineers. The Surfscan group includes a team of engineers technology development apps engineers and product marketing focused on technology that enables wafer IC and equipment manufacturers to develop qualify and monitor their process tools. Defects and process non-uniformities detected on Surfscan equipment allow for early identification of yield excursions. The flagship Surfscan products include the SPx platforms for wafer surface quality and wafer defect inspection tools and systems for inspection of polished wafers epi wafers and engineered substrates during the wafer fabrication process.

Job Description/Preferred Qualifications

Required skills/Competencies

• Programming Languages

  • Strong in Python data structures and algorithms.

  • Hands-on with NumPy Pandas Scikit-learn for ML prototyping.

• Machine Learning Frameworks

  • Understanding of supervised/unsupervised learning regularization feature engineering model selection cross-validation ensemble methods (XGBoost LightGBM).

• Deep Learning Techniques

  • Proficiency with PyTorch or TensorFlow/Keras

  • Knowledge of CNNs RNNs LSTMs Transformers Attention mechanisms.

  • Familiarity with optimization (Adam SGD) dropout batch norm.

• LLMs & RAG

  • Hugging Face Transformers (tokenizers embeddings model fine-tuning).

  • Vector databases (Milvus FAISS Pinecone ElasticSearch).

  • Prompt engineering function/tool calling JSON schema outputs.

• Data & Tools

  • SQL fundamentals; exposure to data wrangling and pipelines.

  • Git/GitHub Jupyter basic Docker.

What are we looking for

• Solid academic foundation with strong applied ML/DL exposure.

• Curiosity to learn cutting-edge AI and willingness to experiment.

• Clear communicator who can explain ML/LLM trade-offs simply.

• Strong problem-solving and ownership mindset.

Minimum Qualifications

Doctorate (Academic) Degree and 5 years related work experience; Masters Level Degree and related work experience of 8 years; Bachelors Level Degree and related work experience of 7 years in building AI systems/solutions with Machine Learning Deep Learning and LLMs.

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

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