Senior Machine Control Software Engineer

The Company

Halo Industries has invented a technology to replace a decades-old semiconductor material slicing process that wastes billions of dollars annually. 

Halo’s laser-based technology eliminates this waste, delivering improvements in both material cost and performance, while enabling manufacturing advancements in a diverse set of high-growth applications markets, including the automotive, grid infrastructure, telecommunications and power electronics sectors.  

Halo originally spun out of Stanford University in 2014, acquiring a significant A round of VC funding in 2020 following the successful demonstration of the company’s precision material slicing equipment.

Halo is now planning its volume manufacturing operations and building a passionate team to meet its next milestone of deploying the company’s first fully integrated production line.

Halo Industries is well-funded, engaged with strategic customers, and staged to achieve rapid operational, revenue, and valuation growth.   

The Opportunity

The evolution of Halo’s technology and equipment, growing from an R&D focus to a production manufacturing environment, has triggered the need for an experienced Senior Machine Control Software Engineer who can lead the design, development, and deployment of the company’s production line equipment control and automation strategy including integration of semiconductor manufacturing equipment with factory systems using the SECS/GEM standards

Job Description

• Design and implement SECS/GEM interfaces for semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
• Work closely with equipment vendors to understand equipment capabilities and ensure compliance with SECS/GEM standards.
• Develop and maintain software applications for equipment communication and integration into the factory systems.
• Define control standards to be implemented uniformly across the production line
• Evaluate and select industrial controller hardware (e.g. PC, PLC, embedded microcontroller)
• Write high level device drivers for robotics, motion control, lasers, and data acquisition
• Integrate custom and off-the-shelf device drivers into reliable, robust operator controllable state machines
• Develop easy-to-use operator graphical user interfaces
• Perform thorough testing and debugging from the system level down to the component level
• Maintain thorough documentation and version control
• Work closely with mechanical, electrical, system, and NPI engineers
• Implement Factory Automation features and operations

Requirements

Preferred Education & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science or a related technical field with 5+ years of applicable experience
• Candidates with advanced degrees may qualify for a given position with fewer years of experience.

What We’re Looking For

• Knowledge of best practices for implementing high-reliability production line instrument control systems
• Experience building instrument control systems using both PLC and PC environments
• Knowledge of hardware communication protocols (e.g. Modbus, TCP/IP, serial, ASCII, USB)
• Working knowledge of servos, motors, sensors, actuators, I/O devices, and relays
• Experience with a variety of programming languages used in industrial automation (preferably including C#GUI development experience, SEMI E95 helpful)
• Factory automation experience, including distributed control and centralized data acquisition and database storage
• Experience with source control (preferably Git)
• Product and process development experience leading to an ability to understand the desired system behaviors
• Outstanding detail-oriented analytical, creative, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to think critically to diagnose issues and optimize complex processes
• Ability to work self-sufficiently with minimal oversight
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to lead and work effectively within an interdisciplinary team
• Desire to play a ground-floor leadership role in a high-growth environment

Bonus

• Semiconductor manufacturing experience
• Experience with Human Machine Interaction systems
• Experience with Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)
• Experience with SECS/GEM SEMI Standards, Factory Automation, SEMI E30, E10, E95

• Expertise in mechatronics/automation design (motor sizing, actuator design, sensor selection, etc.)

• Past startup experience and insights/lessons learned on effectively scaling from R&D to production
• Experience with Akka.Net or other Actor Frameworks
• Experience selecting and configuring databases and/or interfacing databases to factory automation
• Experience with Python for hardware control, graphical user interfaces and data analysis

Benefits

• Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
• Retirement Plan (401k, IRA)
• Paid Time Off (Vacation, Sick & Public Holidays)
• Family Leave (Maternity, Paternity)
• Stock Option Plan