Senior Applied Scientist – AI/ML Calibration & Optimization

Location: Milpitas, California, United States

Salary: $136,300–$231,700 annually

Company

hirify.global develops semiconductor inspection tools, metrology systems, process solutions, and computational analytics for chip manufacturing, including electron-beam inspection technologies.

What you will do

• Redesign calibration and recalibration workflows to improve speed, accuracy, repeatability, robustness, and system productivity.
• Develop and validate calibration algorithms for electron sources, electron-optical columns, beam-steering systems, detectors, alignment, focus, high-voltage behavior, and vacuum-related performance.
• Apply machine learning, statistical modeling, physics-informed AI, optimization, anomaly detection, and uncertainty analysis to calibration and system diagnostics.
• Analyze large engineering, operational, experimental, and fleet-level datasets to detect drift, anomalies, failure modes, tool-to-tool differences, and performance patterns.
• Design experiments, correlate model predictions with measured hardware results, and refine algorithms and calibration strategies.
• Partner with electron optics, systems, software, algorithm, manufacturing, and service teams from concept through implementation, validation, product qualification, and production deployment.

Requirements

• M.S. or Ph.D. in Physics, Applied Physics, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Data Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Optical Engineering, or a related quantitative discipline.
• At least 3 years of relevant industrial or applied research experience; relevant doctoral or postdoctoral work may qualify when it demonstrates substantial ownership of applied modeling, algorithm development, experimentation, or engineering-data analysis.
• Experience developing and validating machine-learning, statistical, or mathematical models for complex physical, scientific, or engineering problems.
• Strong foundation in several of numerical optimization; probability and statistics; linear algebra and numerical methods; regression, estimation, or system identification; time-series or multivariate analysis; and sensitivity analysis, uncertainty quantification, or error propagation.
• Proficiency in Python and practical experience with a modern ML or scientific-computing framework such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, scikit-learn, SciPy, or a comparable environment.
• Experience with substantial engineering, experimental, simulation, sensor, telemetry, or operational datasets.
• Evidence of personally developing or materially improving an algorithm, model, or optimization method, rather than solely applying an off-the-shelf model.
• Experience designing experiments, evaluating model performance, and correlating analytical or model predictions with measured results.
• Ability to independently frame ambiguous technical problems, test hypotheses, evaluate tradeoffs, and communicate conclusions to cross-functional engineering partners.

Nice to have

• Experience with calibration, system identification, controls, diagnostics, drift compensation, predictive maintenance, or condition monitoring.
• Familiarity with electron-optical systems, SEM, charged-particle optics, semiconductor inspection, or metrology equipment.
• Experience with advanced scientific instruments, imaging systems, robotics, autonomous systems, aerospace systems, medical imaging, industrial equipment, or other sensor-rich physical platforms.
• Experience with fleet data, machine telemetry, high-dimensional time-series data, or distributed engineering-data environments.
• Familiarity with physics-informed neural networks, neural operators, surrogate models, differentiable simulation, inverse problems, or hybrid physics/data models.
• Experience with design of experiments, statistical process control, robust optimization, Bayesian methods, or uncertainty-aware modeling.
• Experience accelerating scientific workloads with GPUs, HPC, or parallel computing.
• Experience translating Python or research prototypes into production software; C++ experience is helpful but not required.
• Experience contributing algorithms to a released product or operational engineering workflow.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time employee position with medical, dental, vision, life, and other voluntary benefits.
• 401(k) with company matching and an employee stock purchase program.
• Student debt assistance, tuition reimbursement, financial planning, wellness, and career development programs.
• Paid time off, company holidays, and family care and bonding leave.
• Equal opportunity employment and reasonable accommodation for qualified individuals with disabilities.