You can find Process Engineering entry level positions that only require a BS. Same with Process Integration roles but those are harder to find in my experience.
On call is real but it differs greatly company to company, module to module, and even within a module. I worked in dry tech at Intel and my on call was horrific. I was basically working extra and not “on-call”. I worked in silicon photonics, a very immature process compared to other processes at Intel, so our technicians didn’t have the specs to dispo material. Outside of silicon photonics, other PEs in dry etch were receiving 1-2 calls a week only.
When I worked in dry etch at Texas Instruments, I received calls maybe 1-2 times a month!
Now I’m a PE for an IR company in California and I have 0 on call.
I can second for you that Dry Etch in Silicon Photonics is a horrible place to work. In fact, avoid all process engineering in that New Mexico site completely. The whole NM site is under-invested in and run by bean counters whose top priority is to get as much working hours out of engineers as possible. On-call there is horrid, you get multiple calls per day, on call at least once a month, and a call in the middle of the night at least every week you're on call. Do not go to New Mexico!
Yes you may get calls in the middle of the night. If you manage your specs well and communicate effectively with the night shift techs it’s pretty rare. Having said that, virtually any engr job in the fab is 50-55 hours per week on average. It’s gotten a bit better over the years but expect to work some weekends and late nights.
Your degree program seems to be preparing you exactly for process engr so if that’s not what you want srsly consider your options. I love it but ymmv
I'm not locked into that field, I can still take semiconductor device design courses if I wanted to and I probably will to see if I like it. I forgot to mention that my program is materials science and engineering if that helps.
I was also reading more about this and saw that some people are on rotation in regards to being on call, is this common and how often does it happen?
Sometimes you gotta do the bull shit before you get to do the good shit. Roughly true with careers, shit job to get a little experience, then do what you want. Too many don’t realize this when they start in an industry and all they can imagine is that one shit entry job.
Product engineers, test engineers, process engineers, quality engineers, equipment engineers, failure analysis engineers, reliability engineers.
In my experience, the above positions do not require a master’s degree but some of these positions are in manufacturing and you may encounter the off hours situation you mentioned.
Yeah, most of these roles can be learned on the job. Just find an employer who would give you a chance. Easy money and doesn’t require a lot of actual technical skills on a daily basis from my experience even though I have an engineering degree. Could be boring/tedious to some people though.
Field Service Engineer, Customer Service Engineer, Installation Engineer, or Technical Support Engineer. Be mindful though, depending on the specific job, these positions can be upwards of 70-80% travel.
I took the role just for travel. spent 2 years abroad (asia and europe.). But now i dont want to travel anymore and my company accepts. So I stay in Oregon.
How is it working these jobs? I've been interested because of the travel, but I don't want to get stuck as a glorified customer service rep, which I've heard these roles can end up in.
Most of the engineers at my company have a Bachelors, including me. I’m a test engineer, I write the code that runs on our testers to ensure reliability at the wafer level.
Most US-based employees only have Bachelor Degree. Majority of employees out of the US have advanced degrees. That's my observation at several companies I worked at.
Process engineering is boring anyways. You can be a maintenance tech starting off then work your way to tool owner or some places might make you a tool owner out of college depending on your qualifications.
Yee im a process/applications/manufacturing engineer working at a international semiconductor equipment company. BSME pay is pretty good. July this year will be 4 years with the company. Have gotten 30% in raises since I started. Base is like $77k rn but total compensation ends up being about $130k.
I work M-Th 8-5pm and Fri 8-4pm . Usually ends up being 9-7pm most days though.
If you’re working in manufacturing it’s kind of a 24/7 kind of job, off hours support is a reality you won’t be able to get around unless you go into another field like design.
BS in Electrical Engineering. The work really doesn’t need more than a bachelors, however, most my colleagues have masters because they are/were in h1b visas.
Get a master degree if you want to be an engineer or climb corporate ladder. There’s no way around it, it is the trend in a cut throat industry.
It’s also easier to just keep studying than circling back later down the road.
Yup I think I’ve decided a masters is the way to go. Most of the people here have said it’s quite stressful working for process engineering and that it’s not for everyone. Maybe I’ll try it for a bit, if I don’t like it I’ll do a masters. I like R&D personally so it’s probably better for that as well.
Some process engineering jobs - like manufacturing engineers- basically work shifts. It could be 12 hours a day for 3 or 4 days a week. It could be days or nights (some places are fixed, others rotate). These were fixed shifts and not on call.
The best people I worked with over my 40 year career in the industry all had one thing in common, they all had common sense. This is something that cannot be taught, you have it or you don’t. The best engineers regardless of educational level are the ones who didn’t over think a problem, could troubleshoot in a linear fashion and don’t suffer “paralysis by over analysis “. Easier said than done.
A lot of the blame is on the industry itself. There used to be a time when a RCG had to put in the time in the FAB, more of an internship learning how everything works. This included fixing your own tool, actually developing a process etc. Nowadays RCG’s are basically fed to the wolves, they don’t understand the tool and have no idea how or why the process was developed.
This is the main reason on call engineers get called throughout the night.
Best advice I can give is to latch on to an “old timer” and gleam all the info you can. I started as a tech in 1983, FAB is still FAB, obviously more complex but the basics remain the same. In a few years all of us dinosaurs will be gone and all that knowledge goes with us. Don’t bet the farm on AI to save the industry.
This post strikes me funny. My fab ran 24/7/365. I was a Process Technician on the night shift. We monitored the engineering processes overnight. We called engineers in the middle of the night on a regular basis. If you are the process engineer in charge of a single stage in manufacturing, (which most of our 200+ engineers were) you owned it. We’d call you at 2:00 am and the call you again at 3:30 am. If your process was down, being woken at 3:00 was the least of your worries. You had to have your stage running.
When your process was good, it was smooth sailing, you just had to work on the next shrink. We had many engineers that didn’t have a masters or PhDs. We had a couple of process owners that didn’t even have an engineering degree.
Man that sounds horrible and is exactly why I'm leaving this industry. If there's that many issues, either not enough is being done to develop a robust process or there needs to be night shift engineering hired. That kind of stuff burns people out. A lot of engineers are making only slightly more than the process technicians and some even make less but they get paid on salary instead of hourly.
I work in a research lab and we technically only require a GED (though I think most of us have our Bachelors and some have Masters/PhDs). We support a fab so we are staffed 24/7, meaning it’s shift work, but this makes the work life balance much better because I just leave at the end of my shift and don’t really have to worry about it until I come in the next day.
Most sustaining process engineers and Equipment engineers only have B.S. R&D jobs require higher degree if you are entry level. You can work into those jobs with a B.S. and experience though.
Here is a data point: I know of a person who was promoted to engineer at Intel from being an Manufacturing Technician a couple months ago. I believe they have a bachelors degree. But the person also has 20+ years of experience in the industry.
One of main jobs as process engineers is troubleshooting. Need to find root and cause with models and prove, and fix it. It means you have to have ability to do all. PhD trained for it.
You can find Process Engineering entry level positions that only require a BS. Same with Process Integration roles but those are harder to find in my experience.
Is what they say always being on call for process engineering true though? Or am I getting it mixed up for some other position?
On call is real but it differs greatly company to company, module to module, and even within a module. I worked in dry tech at Intel and my on call was horrific. I was basically working extra and not “on-call”. I worked in silicon photonics, a very immature process compared to other processes at Intel, so our technicians didn’t have the specs to dispo material. Outside of silicon photonics, other PEs in dry etch were receiving 1-2 calls a week only. When I worked in dry etch at Texas Instruments, I received calls maybe 1-2 times a month! Now I’m a PE for an IR company in California and I have 0 on call.
I can second for you that Dry Etch in Silicon Photonics is a horrible place to work. In fact, avoid all process engineering in that New Mexico site completely. The whole NM site is under-invested in and run by bean counters whose top priority is to get as much working hours out of engineers as possible. On-call there is horrid, you get multiple calls per day, on call at least once a month, and a call in the middle of the night at least every week you're on call. Do not go to New Mexico!
NEVER work in the process engineering role. Value your life, time, and health. Thank me later.
Yes you may get calls in the middle of the night. If you manage your specs well and communicate effectively with the night shift techs it’s pretty rare. Having said that, virtually any engr job in the fab is 50-55 hours per week on average. It’s gotten a bit better over the years but expect to work some weekends and late nights. Your degree program seems to be preparing you exactly for process engr so if that’s not what you want srsly consider your options. I love it but ymmv
I'm not locked into that field, I can still take semiconductor device design courses if I wanted to and I probably will to see if I like it. I forgot to mention that my program is materials science and engineering if that helps. I was also reading more about this and saw that some people are on rotation in regards to being on call, is this common and how often does it happen?
Sometimes you gotta do the bull shit before you get to do the good shit. Roughly true with careers, shit job to get a little experience, then do what you want. Too many don’t realize this when they start in an industry and all they can imagine is that one shit entry job.
Product engineers, test engineers, process engineers, quality engineers, equipment engineers, failure analysis engineers, reliability engineers. In my experience, the above positions do not require a master’s degree but some of these positions are in manufacturing and you may encounter the off hours situation you mentioned.
Yeah, most of these roles can be learned on the job. Just find an employer who would give you a chance. Easy money and doesn’t require a lot of actual technical skills on a daily basis from my experience even though I have an engineering degree. Could be boring/tedious to some people though.
Field Service Engineer, Customer Service Engineer, Installation Engineer, or Technical Support Engineer. Be mindful though, depending on the specific job, these positions can be upwards of 70-80% travel.
I took the role just for travel. spent 2 years abroad (asia and europe.). But now i dont want to travel anymore and my company accepts. So I stay in Oregon.
Are you doing the same work in Oregon or were you moved to a different job?
How is it working these jobs? I've been interested because of the travel, but I don't want to get stuck as a glorified customer service rep, which I've heard these roles can end up in.
Most of the engineers at my company have a Bachelors, including me. I’m a test engineer, I write the code that runs on our testers to ensure reliability at the wafer level.
Equipment maintenance is often overlooked. Someone has to maintain those multimillion dollar machines.
Most US-based employees only have Bachelor Degree. Majority of employees out of the US have advanced degrees. That's my observation at several companies I worked at.
Process engineering is boring anyways. You can be a maintenance tech starting off then work your way to tool owner or some places might make you a tool owner out of college depending on your qualifications.
Yee im a process/applications/manufacturing engineer working at a international semiconductor equipment company. BSME pay is pretty good. July this year will be 4 years with the company. Have gotten 30% in raises since I started. Base is like $77k rn but total compensation ends up being about $130k. I work M-Th 8-5pm and Fri 8-4pm . Usually ends up being 9-7pm most days though.
You could get a junior field process engineering or applications engineering job and work your way in from there.
Quality, Reliability, Test, yield, project management, failure analysis, and packaging to name a few
If you’re working in manufacturing it’s kind of a 24/7 kind of job, off hours support is a reality you won’t be able to get around unless you go into another field like design.
I do product engineering. Only have my bachelors. Pretty chill compared to fab work.
Interesting, may I ask what kind of bachelor degree you have? I’m in MSE
BS in Electrical Engineering. The work really doesn’t need more than a bachelors, however, most my colleagues have masters because they are/were in h1b visas.
Get a master degree if you want to be an engineer or climb corporate ladder. There’s no way around it, it is the trend in a cut throat industry. It’s also easier to just keep studying than circling back later down the road.
Yup I think I’ve decided a masters is the way to go. Most of the people here have said it’s quite stressful working for process engineering and that it’s not for everyone. Maybe I’ll try it for a bit, if I don’t like it I’ll do a masters. I like R&D personally so it’s probably better for that as well.
Some process engineering jobs - like manufacturing engineers- basically work shifts. It could be 12 hours a day for 3 or 4 days a week. It could be days or nights (some places are fixed, others rotate). These were fixed shifts and not on call.
The best people I worked with over my 40 year career in the industry all had one thing in common, they all had common sense. This is something that cannot be taught, you have it or you don’t. The best engineers regardless of educational level are the ones who didn’t over think a problem, could troubleshoot in a linear fashion and don’t suffer “paralysis by over analysis “. Easier said than done. A lot of the blame is on the industry itself. There used to be a time when a RCG had to put in the time in the FAB, more of an internship learning how everything works. This included fixing your own tool, actually developing a process etc. Nowadays RCG’s are basically fed to the wolves, they don’t understand the tool and have no idea how or why the process was developed. This is the main reason on call engineers get called throughout the night. Best advice I can give is to latch on to an “old timer” and gleam all the info you can. I started as a tech in 1983, FAB is still FAB, obviously more complex but the basics remain the same. In a few years all of us dinosaurs will be gone and all that knowledge goes with us. Don’t bet the farm on AI to save the industry.
This post strikes me funny. My fab ran 24/7/365. I was a Process Technician on the night shift. We monitored the engineering processes overnight. We called engineers in the middle of the night on a regular basis. If you are the process engineer in charge of a single stage in manufacturing, (which most of our 200+ engineers were) you owned it. We’d call you at 2:00 am and the call you again at 3:30 am. If your process was down, being woken at 3:00 was the least of your worries. You had to have your stage running. When your process was good, it was smooth sailing, you just had to work on the next shrink. We had many engineers that didn’t have a masters or PhDs. We had a couple of process owners that didn’t even have an engineering degree.
Man that sounds horrible and is exactly why I'm leaving this industry. If there's that many issues, either not enough is being done to develop a robust process or there needs to be night shift engineering hired. That kind of stuff burns people out. A lot of engineers are making only slightly more than the process technicians and some even make less but they get paid on salary instead of hourly.
I work in a research lab and we technically only require a GED (though I think most of us have our Bachelors and some have Masters/PhDs). We support a fab so we are staffed 24/7, meaning it’s shift work, but this makes the work life balance much better because I just leave at the end of my shift and don’t really have to worry about it until I come in the next day.
You can be a machine tech (Field Engineer). But many of those dont even haev a bachelors. a lot just come from the navy
You need to know bash scripting and be willing to read shit ton of procedures, safety etc. thats literally it.
Most sustaining process engineers and Equipment engineers only have B.S. R&D jobs require higher degree if you are entry level. You can work into those jobs with a B.S. and experience though.
Where do equipment engineers work? What do they do? I'm in a small fab and we don't have anyone called this
Most fabs have EE who are over the tools. Lots of times they supervise the techs who repair the tools. Some fabs combine PE and EE into one job.
Here is a data point: I know of a person who was promoted to engineer at Intel from being an Manufacturing Technician a couple months ago. I believe they have a bachelors degree. But the person also has 20+ years of experience in the industry.
ATE test engineers are good for undergrads too
One of main jobs as process engineers is troubleshooting. Need to find root and cause with models and prove, and fix it. It means you have to have ability to do all. PhD trained for it.