Senior / Staff Mechanical R&D Engineer

To make electronics, you need chips, wafers, transistors, reticles, and... To make these, you must see, test and manufacture them at scale—faster and better than ever before. That's where KLA comes in. Whether you're early in your career or an experienced professional, you'll solve complex challenges, work alongside brilliant minds and help shape the future of technology.

Group/Division

KLA’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) has a critical role in researching and developing leading-edge, forward-looking technology. The CTO Office collaborates with product divisions and strategic marketing to work on future technologies such as light sources, lasers and sensors. We also bring technical input into KLA’s strategic planning process, program reviews and product lifecycle (PLC) phases. Our broad technology expertise and cross-division experience harnesses the collective knowledge within our company to propel technology advancements.

What You'll Do

In this role, you will play a key part in advancing business priorities by delivering high-impact work across your area of expertise.

Responsibilities:

• Design robotic platforms, precision mechanisms, automation equipment, fixtures, tooling, and sensor-integrated mechanical systems for advanced manufacturing and assembly applications.
• Own the complete mechanical development cycle, including requirements definition, feasibility studies, concept and detailed design, tolerance analysis, engineering drawings, design reviews, prototyping, testing, troubleshooting, and system integration.
• Conduct structural, thermal, vibration, and mechanical performance analyses to ensure precision, stability, robustness, and reliability.
• Define and manage mechanical interfaces among robots, cameras, sensors, actuators, safety equipment, and process hardware.
• Collaborate with electrical, controls, software, machine vision, AI, optics, and system engineers to deliver integrated robotic solutions.
• Support evaluation, qualification, and implementation of robotic technologies, automation components, and external suppliers.
• Drive innovative R&D activities in robotics, intelligent automation, precision engineering, and scalable platform development.

Design Challenges May Include:

• High-precision robotic motion, positioning, calibration, and opto-mechanical assembly.
• Vibration control, thermal management, and photo-contamination control.
• Integration of machine vision, force sensing, controls, and AI-enabled robotic functions.

Requirements:

• Solid understanding of mechanical engineering fundamentals, including machine design, mechanisms, materials, tolerance analysis, and manufacturing processes.
• Hands-on R&D experience in precision mechanical design, prototyping, assembly, testing, and troubleshooting.
• Demonstrated capability in structural analysis, vibration control, and thermal analysis.
• Experience in robotics, automation equipment, or precision machinery is desirable.
• Good understanding of multidisciplinary system development, requirement decomposition, interface management, and verification planning.
• Passion for technology innovation and great teamwork.

Minimum Qualifications

• Masters/PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics, Robotics, Precision Engineering, or a related discipline, with minimum 5 years of relevant industrial or research experience.

About KLA

We provide advanced inspection tools, metrology systems, process solutions, and computational analytics that make electronics possible, tackling complex challenges. From electron and photon optics to machine learning and data analytics, we seek perfection at the most fundamental level of matter in the universe. If you want to make electronics that push industries forward and make the world a better place, join us.

Use of AI Statement 

At KLA, our interviews seek to understand your individual skills, problem-solving approach and authentic thinking. To ensure a fair and consistent evaluation, the use of AI, recording tools or other technologies to generate, suggest or provide responses during interviews—whether virtual or in person—is not permitted unless explicitly approved in advance as part of a reasonable accommodation or invited by the interviewer. Use of these tools may interfere with our ability to evaluate your individual qualifications and affect your candidacy. KLA is committed to advancing innovation through responsible AI, and we value candidates who share this mindset.

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.