Senior Engineering Director, HDD Head Wafer Manufacturing (HDD)

Location: Onsite at the San Jose Great Oaks Headquarters, California, United States

Salary: $252,500–$336,600 annually

Company

Develops storage systems and manufacturing infrastructure for hyperscale data centers, cloud platforms, and enterprise infrastructure.

What you will do

• Lead Process Engineering and Equipment Engineering teams across wafer process modules, tools, and manufacturing segments.
• Own wafer supply, yield, cycle time, cost, and quality performance for the fabrication site.
• Drive root-cause analysis, process characterization, corrective actions, and systemic yield improvement.
• Remove bottlenecks, improve equipment utilization, and implement lean productivity and cost-reduction initiatives.
• Partner with HDD technology and product engineering teams on manufacturing capability, new process introductions, and technology transfers.
• Recruit, develop, and retain approximately 50 engineers while leading organizational scaling and restructuring.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical, chemical, mechanical engineering, physics, applied physics, or a related field with 10+ years of relevant experience, or a master’s degree with 8+ years.
• Experience in HDD head wafer fabrication, semiconductor wafer manufacturing, or a comparable full-scale wafer fabrication environment.
• Track record leading engineering organizations of 50+ people in high-volume manufacturing.
• Demonstrated experience with yield improvement, cycle time reduction, cost or productivity initiatives, and process and equipment engineering across multiple modules.
• Experience setting engineering standards, developing managers, building high-performing teams, and leading organizational change or restructuring.
• Strong safety leadership and experience institutionalizing an EHS-focused culture.

Nice to have

• Master’s degree in a relevant engineering or applied science discipline.
• Direct HDD head wafer process experience, including GMR/TMR head fabrication, thin-film deposition, photolithography, CMP, or ion milling.
• Lean manufacturing or Six Sigma experience in a wafer fabrication context.

Culture & Benefits

• Safety, continuous improvement, engineering excellence, and operational discipline are core expectations.
• Benefits include paid vacation and sick leave, medical, dental, and vision insurance, life and disability insurance, and flexible spending and health savings accounts.
• Additional benefits include tuition reimbursement, transit support, employee assistance, legal and pet insurance, employee stock purchase opportunities, and a 401(k) savings plan.
• Eligible employees may be considered for short-term incentives, long-term incentives, and restricted stock unit awards.