More Than Numbers
Students who complete a graduate internship work in a wide variety of roles in government, clinical, and academic labs, as well as research and development in industry. Alumni develop skills which have been successfully transferred to a wide variety of science and analyst roles. A selection of roles is highlighted below. These example positions share core competencies: significant overlap of responsibilities between different roles is possible.
Common Job Titles for Semiconductors and Photovoltaics Graduates
Students who complete the semiconductors track work in a wide variety of engineering roles within the life science, semiconductor, and defense sectors, as well as peripheral sectors such as next-gen computing and autonomous vehicles. Alumni from this track develop skills which have been successfully transferred to a wide variety of engineering and management roles in manufacturing, hardware development, materials research, analytics, software development and research and development. A selection of roles is highlighted below.
Process Engineer: Combines process knowledge and experimentation methods to maintain and improve the quality of a processing step, as well as trouble shoot when necessary. Example: Owns the plasma etch toolset at a semiconductor manufacturing company, meaning they are accountable for etch tools use and up time, while also in charge of conducting experiments to continuously improve process yield and throughput of the etch process.
Yield or Quality Engineer: Collaborates with process engineers to identify and correct manufacturing steps leading to yield problems by combining process flow knowledge and data. Example: In semiconductor manufacturing, evaluates data to identify a yield limitation in the process flow, such as 10% of water have failures in the center of their devices. Works with tool owners of each manufacturing step (process engineer) to determine the root cause of problem and implement necessary process changes across all processes to address the problem.
Product Engineer: Develops new products based on the emerging needs and trends in the industry. Example: Develops the next-gen commercial inkjet printheads by redesigning the thin-film stack and geometry of the firing chamber to increase the firing consistency and precision of ink droplets.
Application engineer: Demonstrates the value of major capital equipment (>$1M) to customers by showing them how the equipment can solve their problems and provides technical support after sale. Example: Works for an electron microscopy company that serves semiconductor customers with defect analysis through demonstrating, supporting and optimizing sample extraction, sample preparation and visualization techniques that allow the customer to achieve clearer results and better efficiency.
Application Development Engineer: Similar to an application engineer, this role is differentiated by its primary focus on developing and testing new recipes to solve emerging problems in the industry. Example: Works for a reactive ion etch (RIE) tool supplier to develop recipes that can create exceptionally deep and narrow trenches on semiconductor wafers, imperative for the next technology node development.