Software Engineer

Who We Are

Applied Materials is the global leader in materials science and engineering solutions that are at the foundation of virtually every new semiconductor chip and advanced display in the world. The equipment that we create and service is essential to advancing AI and accelerating the commercialization of next-generation semiconductor chips. Join us and push the boundaries of materials science and engineering in a company at the foundation of the electronics industry. The work we do together advances the world’s technology.

What We Offer

Salary:

$152,000.00 - $208,500.00

Location:

Santa Clara,CA

You’ll benefit from a supportive work culture that encourages you to learn, develop, and grow your career as you take on challenges and drive innovative solutions for our customers. We empower our team to push the boundaries of what is possible—while learning every day in a supportive leading global company. Visit our Careers website to learn more.

At Applied Materials, we care about the health and wellbeing of our employees. We’re committed to providing programs and support that encourage personal and professional growth and care for you at work, at home, or wherever you may go. Learn more about our benefits.

As a Software Engineer at Applied Materials, you’ll dive deep into ground-breaking technologies—like machine learning and AI—to craft novel software solutions that solve our customers’ high-value problems. Our Software Engineers are responsible for designing, prototyping, developing, and debugging software solutions for semiconductor equipment components and devices to ensure quality and functionality. You'll develop software documentation and test procedures, troubleshoot software problems, and communicate with internal customers to understand project requirements. As part of our team, you'll contribute your expertise in intricate systems, deciphering code, and anticipating software behaviors to ensure Applied remains the leader in the semiconductor and display sectors.

Must Have

Strong software engineering fundamentals

• Proficient in Python and comfortable building more than prototype scripts.
• Experience writing maintainable, tested code with clear APIs and good engineering practices.
• Familiar with common scientific/data libraries (NumPy, Pandas, Polars, SciPy, etc.).
• Able to quickly learn and contribute to production codebases, services, or tooling.

Algorithms, data processing, and applied problem solving

• Strong foundation in algorithms, data structures, and computational thinking.
• Comfortable working with numerical data, time-series data, statistics, and signal-processing concepts.
• Able to translate research papers, technical specifications, or ambiguous problem statements into working software.
• Demonstrates strong analytical thinking and sound debugging skills.

Systems and low-level software understanding

• Solid understanding of operating systems, memory, concurrency, data layout, I/O, networking, and performance fundamentals.
• Interested in how software works beneath the abstraction layers.
• Comfortable reasoning about efficiency, scalability, and resource utilization.
• Can investigate bottlenecks using data and profiling rather than guesswork.

End-to-end engineering mindset

• Able to design and implement software components with clear interfaces and separation of concerns.
• Comfortable working across the stack from data ingestion and computation to APIs and user-facing functionality.
• Familiar with testing, version control, code reviews, and collaborative software development.

Communication and collaboration

• Able to communicate technical ideas clearly in both written and verbal form.
• Can explain tradeoffs and reasoning to engineers, researchers, and domain experts.
• Comfortable documenting designs, experiments, and implementation decisions.

Curiosity, ownership, and learning velocity

• Genuinely curious about how systems work and motivated to understand root causes, not just symptoms.
• Self-driven and able to make progress in ambiguous problem spaces.
• Enjoys learning new technologies, digging into unfamiliar codebases, and solving difficult technical problems.
• Demonstrates intellectual curiosity through projects, research, open-source contributions, or hands-on experimentation.

Strong Plus

Advanced degree or research experience

• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Physics, or a related field.
• Experience conducting research and turning ideas into practical implementations.

Distributed systems and service development

• Familiarity with service-oriented architectures and modern communication protocols.
• Experience with gRPC, Protocol Buffers, REST APIs, message queues, or distributed systems concepts.

Systems programming

• Experience with Rust, C++, or C.
• Interest in systems programming, high-performance computing, profiling, optimization, or low-level debugging.

Semiconductor, instrumentation, or scientific data systems

• Experience with semiconductor manufacturing, plasma processing, spectroscopy, fault detection, endpoint detection, or related domains.
• More generally, experience extracting insights from noisy real-world sensor or instrument data.

Data engineering and visualization

• Experience with SQL, Arrow, Parquet, dataframe-based data pipelines, and large-scale data processing.
• Willingness to work across disciplines and occasionally contribute to front-end or visualization layers (TypeScript, React, Tauri, Electron, etc.).

Additional Information

Time Type:

Full time

Employee Type:

Assignee / Regular

Travel:

Yes, 10% of the Time

Relocation Eligible:

Yes

The salary offered to a selected candidate will be based on multiple factors including location, hire grade, job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and with consideration of internal equity of our current team members. In addition to a comprehensive benefits package, candidates may be eligible for other forms of compensation such as participation in a bonus and a stock award program, as applicable.

For all sales roles, the posted salary range is the Target Total Cash (TTC) range for the role, which is the sum of base salary and target bonus amount at 100% goal achievement.

Applied Materials is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, citizenship, ancestry, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, veteran or military status, or any other basis prohibited by law.

In addition, Applied endeavors to make our careers site accessible to all users. If you would like to contact us regarding accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process, please contact us via e-mail at [email protected], or by calling our HR Direct Help Line at 877-612-7547, option 1, and following the prompts to speak to an HR Advisor. This contact is for accommodation requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.