Electronic Hardware Design Engineer

About Atomic Semi

Atomic Semi is building a small, fast semiconductor fab.

It’s already possible to build this with today’s technology and a few simplifications. We’ll build the tools ourselves so we can quickly iterate and improve.

We’re building a small team of exceptional, hands-on engineers to make this happen. Mechanical, electrical, hardware, computer, and process. We’ll own the stack from atoms to architecture. Our team is optimistic about the future and we want to continue pushing the limits of technology.

Smaller is better. Faster is better. Building it ourselves is better.

We believe our team and lab can build anything. We’ve set up 3D printers, a wide array of microscopes, e-beam writers, general fabrication equipment - and whatever is missing, we’ll just invent along the way.

Atomic was founded by Sam Zeloof and Jim Keller. Sam is best known for making chips in his garage, and Jim has been a leader in the semiconductor industry for the past 40 years.

About the role

As an Electronic Hardware Design Engineer at Atomic Semi, you will work closely with other engineers to develop lithography systems, deposition tools, vacuum chambers, nanometer precision motion control, plasma etching systems, and related tools.

You’ll be expected to identify problems, prototype solutions, productionize your prototypes, and deliver finished solutions that will revolutionize IC manufacturing. You might work on high-voltage low-noise boost converters, motor drivers, attofarad sensors, and millikelvin temperature controllers - just for a single machine.

Responsibilities

Clean-sheet design of PCBAs and electrical systems for our machines, including schematic, layout, bringup, testing, integration, and documentation

Collaborate cross-functionally with software, mechanical, and process teams to gather requirements, performing independent investigations where requirements are missing

Investigate optimal design approaches and perform detailed analysis/simulations to evaluate electrical designs, weighing COTS and custom solutions to problems.

Required Experience

• Bachelor’s Degree or higher in electrical engineering, or equivalent skill

• 2-5 years of experience designing electrical hardware end-to-end

• Experience with analog and digital circuit design and testing

• Experience with PCB design and simulation tools (Altium, KiCad, LTSpice)

• Hands-on with start-up experience

• Electronic hardware design end to end (ideation through production)

Nice-to-have

• Architect and big picture thinking

• SMT rework abilities

• High speed digital design

• Low noise analog frontend design

• Experience working with plasmas

• Digitally controlled switching power supply design

• Novel power supply architecture implementation experience

• Control theory (control loop design, stability analysis)

• Low voltage DC inverter design