Staff Systems Engineer

The Company Halo Industries has invented a revolutionary technology to replace a decades-old semiconductor material slicing process. Our laser-based technology eliminates waste, improves material cost and performance, and drives advancements in high-growth markets like automotive, telecommunications, and power electronics. Founded in 2014 at Stanford University, Halo secured significant funding in 2024 and is poised for rapid growth, engaging strategic customers and preparing for volume manufacturing. The Opportunity As a Staff Systems Engineer at Halo Industries, you will play a crucial role in the development, integration, and lifecycle management of our next-generation semiconductor manufacturing technology with opportunities to work with advanced optical and laser systems. Working at the intersection of mechanical design, software automation, and process engineering, you will apply your expertise in system design to advance groundbreaking technology from R&D through release. This role requires close collaboration with cross-functional teams to design, integrate, troubleshoot, and optimize complex systems; ensure operational excellence, performance, and reliability; drive cycle-time and production improvements; and manage the technical documentation and hardware changes. The ideal candidate combines strong technical expertise, attention to detail, proactive ownership, and the ability to lead multidisciplinary initiatives. Role and Responsibilities

System requirements and specifications:

• Translate customer, process, performance, safety, and business needs into clear system and subsystem requirements, functional specifications, and acceptance criteria. Maintain traceability through design, integration, verification, and validation.
• Develop and maintain system architectures, theories of operation, functional breakdowns, and interface definitions. Ensure hardware, software, firmware, controls, and process subsystems operate together to meet product requirements.
• Define intended tool behavior, operating sequences, control requirements, and error-recovery strategies.
• Translate program requirements into work breakdown structures (WBS) with executable tasks.
• Drive design review and coordinate feedback throughout the design phases and maintain change control management. Track and document design changes.

Technical analysis and tradeoffs:

• Conduct error budgeting, architecture tradeoff analysis, gap analyses, and engineering assessments to balance performance, reliability, safety, manufacturability, cost, and schedule. Analyze wafer flow, throughput, productivity, and facility requirements.
• Determine whether an issue requires a software correction, hardware repair, process change, calibration adjustment, or requirements update.
• Review test plans, experimental methods, and qualification strategies. Analyze and characterize subsystem behavior, and use statistical analysis to evaluate results.

Systems engineering planning:

• Define technical scope, engineering deliverables, review milestones, and verification strategies. Develop and maintain a Technical Plan to guide execution and assess technical maturity.
• Investigate requests, production issues, and improvement opportunities by consulting operators, process engineers, software engineers, automation teams, and other stakeholders.
• Lead system-level technical decisions within approved requirements. Coordinate priorities and trade-offs with management and competence leads to obtain designated approvals for changes affecting safety, reliability, scope, cost, schedule, customer commitments, or accepted risk.

System Improvement:

• Continuous improvement (CIP) initiatives to reduce cycle time and optimize performance.
• Convert improvement opportunities into detailed requirements and Jira tasks.
• Facilitate the Engineering Change (EC) process, ensuring that documentation, CAD models, and electrical updates are accurate and communicated to stakeholders. Review ECRs to discuss needs and risks to the CCB.
• Validate implemented changes and quantify performance improvements.
• Explore CIP opportunities including component selection and cost optimization.

Risk Management:

• Coordinate technical risk assessments, FMEA, FACA, and safety interlock definitions. Evaluate operating limits, material compatibility, contamination risks, and subsystem interactions with relevant specialists.
• Add preventative checks, diagnostics, or controls where needed to reduce recurrence.
• Evaluate how system components affect each other; identify gaps, and cross-competence risks.
• Partner with multidisciplinary engineering teams to identify, quantify, and close performance gaps throughout the product development lifecycle.

Technical Documentation & Requirements:

• Drive critical technical documentation, including SW and system requirements, device lists, interconnect diagrams, IO lists, test reports, functional flow, recovery guide, CAD, manuals and BOMs.
• Documentation of vendor design and requirements.
• Translate system requirements and improvement opportunities into clear, executable Jira tasks for software, hardware, and controls teams.
• Maintain traceability between field observations, requirements, engineering tasks, implementation, and validation.
• Document and track issues that come up during development and validation.
• Track configuration differences across different tool revision and deployment locations.

Technical Leadership:

• Investigate and record system failures, performance variation, and customer escalations. Use first-principles analysis, diagnostic measurements, log analysis, and structured root-cause methods to resolve issues for future improvements.
• Provide high level training to support the onboarding process.

Requirements

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Optics Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related field, with 7+ years of experience; or master’s degree with 5+ years; or a PhD with 3+ years; or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience defining equipment requirements and specifications, CIPs, priorities management, technical analysis, and field deployment.
• Experience planning systems engineering activities, maintaining technical documentation, and coordinating design reviews and requirements traceability.
• Strong system-level understanding of interactions among mechanical hardware, electrical controls, software, process requirements, and operator workflows.
• Experience using data driven analysis on system failures, performance variation, and customer escalations.
• Experience writing technical requirements, sequence descriptions, and equipment documentation.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Optics and laser design or process experience.
• Experience with project management tools (e.g., Jira, Smartsheet) and version control/documentation management (e.g. Arena).
• Proficiency to translate ambiguous needs into structured requirements, system architectures, interface definitions, and executable plans
• Familiarity with the SEMI standard. Experience leading safety audits.
• Strong technical communication, cross-functional collaboration, and organizational skills, with the ability to influence decisions and alignments.
• Ability to read mechanical drawings, electrical schematics, P&IDs, equipment specifications, and component data sheets.

Benefits

• Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
• Retirement Plan (401k, IRA)
• Paid Time Off (Vacation, Sick & Public Holidays)
• Life Insurance (Basic, Voluntary & AD&D)
• Family Leave (Maternity, Paternity)
• Free Food & Snacks
• Stock Option Plan
• Annual Bonus Plan eligible
• Short Term & Long Term Disability
• Base Salary: $190,000 - $215,000

Additional Information We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace where all team members feel valued and supported. We welcome applicants from diverse backgrounds, including those from underrepresented communities in STEM. If you meet most of the qualifications and are excited about this opportunity, we encourage you to apply.