Foundry Process & Equipment Lead

Touchdown Labs; Gates (OR); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Touchdown Labs seeks a Foundry Process & Equipment Lead to steer the first-stage process decisions for advanced packaging and supplier comparisons. You will define owner responsibilities, ensure safety and cost criteria, and lead multi-domain reviews before any tool purchase or site commitment.

The role emphasizes transitioning customer requirements into measurable process capability and capital decisions, with hands-on guidance across process, equipment, and quality teams.

Qualifications

• Released semiconductor or advanced-packaging processes; equipment, safety, supplier, and transfer judgment.
• Led a semiconductor or packaging process through qualification, transfer, or production release.
• Ability to translate a customer specification into measurable process capability, supplier comparisons, and a capital decision.

Responsibilities

• Own the first-process comparison, process/equipment team, technical rejection, and qualified work boundary.
• Compare a merchant or partner route with internal process against the same customer workpiece and acceptance test.
• Set process-owner, equipment-owner, EHS, quality, and independent release responsibilities before trials.
• Reject a route when safety, rights, utility, cost, yield, or supplier evidence is missing.
• Build a stage-gated process plan with sample size, measurements, repeatability, ownership.
• Lead cross-discipline reviews of tool readiness, process capability, supplier evidence, and cost of a rejected lot.

Skills

Process & equipment judgment

Release decision experience

Cross-functional coordination

Qualified release decisions

Job description

Open role

Foundry Process & Equipment Lead

Why this work matters

Touchdown is engineering the manufacturing behind storage, memory systems, and other chips. This role helps turn a buyer's physical result into a qualified process or a defensible decision to use an existing supplier. Advanced packaging is our intended first fab class; no production fab is operating today.

Overview

This is the technical lead for deciding what physical work Touchdown should attempt first. Start with a customer's workpiece and accepted output, compare a qualified outside route with an owned process, and define the people, site, tools, utilities, controls, and capital each would require. The job includes saying no when a safer or stronger supplier wins. No production fab or first process has been selected.

What you will own

• Own the first-process comparison, process/equipment team, technical rejection, and qualified work boundary.
• Compare a merchant or partner route with any proposed internal process against the same customer workpiece and acceptance test.
• Set process-owner, equipment-owner, EHS, quality, and independent release responsibilities before physical trials.
• Reject a route when safety, rights, utility, cost, yield, or supplier evidence is missing.
• Build a stage-gated process plan connecting customer acceptance, sample size, measurement, repeatability, and ownership of each release.
• Lead cross-discipline reviews of tool readiness, process capability, supplier evidence, and the cost of a rejected lot.

Technical territory

Semiconductor and advanced-package process flows; equipment capability and matching; process windows and metrology; safety and utilities; supplier transfer; qualification, yield, cycle time, cost of ownership, and independent release authority.

Representative outputs

• A first-process decision packet with candidate workpiece, process, partner baseline, site/tool requirements, qualified owners, cost, and stop conditions.
• A role and authority map that names who can hold, reject, and release work.
• A gated trial plan with sample size, measurements, cost ceiling, and failure response.
• A technical decision log with the chosen route, rejected alternatives, evidence gaps, capital exposure, and the next stop or promotion gate.

What success looks like

• The first process decision can be reviewed against an external route.
• No physical work begins without qualified people, site access, safety review, and written authorization.
• The team can explain why this process and workpiece merit a controlled trial before purchasing a tool or committing a site.
• A quality or safety owner can stop the work without relying on the process lead's permission.

What you bring

• Released semiconductor or advanced-packaging processes; equipment, safety, supplier, and transfer judgment.
• Led a semiconductor or packaging process through qualification, transfer, or production release.
• Can review tool capability, process windows, utilities, maintenance, and vendor service together.
• Can make a documented buy, partner, build, or stop recommendation with incomplete data.
• Experience coordinating process, equipment, facilities, quality, and product engineers through a formal release decision.
• Ability to translate a customer specification into measurable process capability, supplier comparisons, and a capital decision.

Helpful experience

• High-mix packaging or heterogeneous integration
• Equipment installation and process transfer
• Tool acceptance and factory start-up
• Cost-of-ownership and capacity modeling
• Customer qualification and external foundry transfer

How the role works

• Applications are open; the exact work location, arrangement, compensation, and start date will be discussed during hiring.
• Early work can produce engineering plans and partner comparisons. Hands-on work begins only at qualified, authorized facilities.
• You will work with process, equipment, quality, test, customer, and supplier owners as the scope requires.