Process Engineer – Microfabrication

This role exists so that the microfabrication group has hands at the bench every day: the parts get made, the experiments get run, and the data comes back. It works alongside the Senior Microfabrication Engineer, who owns the process architecture and sets the direction. It is not a leadership role and it has no team: process steps are handed over one at a time, and the scope grows with what you can hold stable on your own. Download Job Description (PDF)

• Make the parts. Laser writing, scribing and ablation; wet and chemical etching; additive manufacturing and precision machining. The micro-scale parts, fixtures, jigs and test vehicles the development program needs, week by week. A lot of what the lab uses does not exist until somebody here makes it.
• Run the experiments and bring back the data. Prepare the samples, run the matrix as it was designed, record everything, and report the result with numbers rather than impressions.
• Own process steps, one at a time. Starting with the ones you are given: parameters, process window, repeatability run to run. Ownership expands as you prove you can keep a process stable without supervision.
• Close the loop with metrology. Optical microscopy, profilometry and dimensional inspection: connect what you set on the tool to what actually came out on the part.
• Keep the tools running. Routine qualification, cleaning, consumables and maintenance discipline on lasers, wet benches, printers and machines, plus the habit of flagging a drift before it becomes a scrapped batch.
• Write down what you did. Parameter sheets, run records and procedures good enough for someone else to reproduce your result without asking you.
• Work with the people around you. The Senior Microfabrication Engineer, the electrochemistry group, mechanical design and the Technical Office. You will translate between the bench and the drawing more often than you expect.
• BSc or MSc in Mechanical, Manufacturing or Materials Engineering, Physics or Chemistry, or a technical diploma backed by real workshop and laboratory experience.
• 2 to 5 years hands-on in a laboratory, cleanroom, pilot line or precision-manufacturing workshop.
• Real experience with at least one of: laser micromachining, wet or chemical etching, precision machining and CNC, additive manufacturing. One properly done is enough.
• Comfortable at micro-scale tolerances, with surface and edge quality and the measurement that verifies them.
• Basic CAD (SolidWorks or equivalent). CAM and G-code can be learned here.
• Data literacy: enough statistics to read your own results honestly. Python, JMP or Minitab is a plus.
• Judgment about safety: chemicals, lasers, machines and cleanroom discipline are not negotiable.
• Fluent English, written and spoken. Italian is a plus.

Very few places let an engineer at this stage run the laser, the wet bench and the printer themselves and see the parts go into a product within weeks. This is not a desk job, and it is not a design job either. A large part of your week is at the bench, at the wet station, at the laser and at the machines, and some days are one careful repetition after another, and precision matters more than speed on every one of them. You will not be leading anybody: for the first years you are the person doing the work, with the Senior Microfabrication Engineer setting the direction and reviewing it. If that reads as a step down, this is the wrong role. If it reads as where you want to get very good, it is the right one.