Principal Mechanical Engineer

Position Summary:

Responsible for the design, analysis, testing, and manufacturing support of mechanical components in power conversion and plasma source products.  Must be multi-faceted in all aspects of mechanical engineering and willing to take ownership of designs.  Most important areas of expertise are heat-transfer and materials science. 

Essential Responsibilities:

• Independently prepares detailed and optimized mechanical designs of high power electronics packaging and vacuum chambers.
• Own the design and documentation of sheet metal, injection-molded, and machined parts.
• Participates in a multi-disciplined design team and is active in supporting new platform development activities.  Design team interaction with Asia locations and within the US.
• Makes mathematical calculations to determine dimensional and positional variation (tolerance stack-ups) for mechanical components.
• Engineering simulation experience, including thermal, structure, and fluid-flow.
• Experiment design and data acquisition, such as temperature measurements, stress/strain measurements.
• Takes into account solid material properties, behaviors, and failure modes of: polymers, metals, and ceramics.
• Design and carry-out experiments to assess component durability or performance.
• Interacts with manufacturers to produce manufacturable and cost efficient parts.
• Considers method of fabrication during the design process – including machining, grinding and forming – in order to produce a manufacturable, optimized design.
• Provide guidance to Mechanical Designers and Drafters.
• Participates in the manufacturing and re-work of prototype parts, including 3D printing.

Work Environment:

• Work is split between a standard office environment, an engineering lab, and/or clean room.  10% travel to international destinations.

Skills & Experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering or Materials Science.
• Minimum of 5 years of related design experience.
• Advanced knowledge of Solid Works or other 3D modeling software.
• Must have a working knowledge of Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing per ANSI Y14.5.
• Experience in thermal analysis, hand calculations, and engineering simulation software.  Ansys preferred.
• Experience with plasma processing and manufacturing, knowledge of materials, purity, cleanliness required for semiconductor wafer processing.
• Demonstrated experience with vacuum equipment as applied to plasma processing.
• Knowledge of materials science to design parts to withstand harsh plasma environments.
• Working knowledge of manufacturing process in metal machining, sheet metal, injection molding.
• Expertise in thermal instrumentation and experimental design validation.
• Prefer ability of scripting in Python or MatLab to support data acquisition and design simulation.
• Prefer experience in developing anodization for corrosive atmospheres.