Director of Product Applications Engineer-Lithography Materials-Rolla, MO Area

DESCRIPTION

The Director of Product Applications is a senior technical leader responsible for leading the product applications organization as the global center of product characterization, application readiness, technical collateral, and commercial technical enablement. The Director plays a critical role in enabling the Field Applications Engineering (FAE) organization and commercial teams with the technical tools, data, expertise, and support required to accelerate customer design-in, qualification success, and profitable growth.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Define team structure, responsibilities, priorities, and interfaces.
• Recruit, coach, and develop strong technical talent and establish performance expectations and operating cadence.
• Build a culture of ownership, urgency, rigor, and customer relevance and create a scalable organization capable of supporting portfolio growth.
• Implement a Product Application Owner model with one named technical owner per product or platform.
• Ensure accountability for Best Known Methods (BKMs), Application Notes, process recommendations, application limits / process windows, and technical data packages.
• Maintain technical consistency across products, customers, and regions.
• Partner with R&D from concept through commercialization to define critical technical questions for each product.
• Build characterization strategies that determine performance requirements, failure modes, process sensitivities, customer-use conditions, and manufacturing readiness.
• Define and implement application methods, screening methods, qualification test plans, correlation studies, and acceptance criteria.
• Ensure test methods are relevant, repeatable, efficient, and credible for customer adoption.
• Translate development data into process guidance, product claims support, and release readiness decisions.
• Own development and maintenance of technical collateral supporting internal and external adoption.
• Build and maintain BKMs, Application Notes, integration guides, datasheet technical content, qualification support packages, troubleshooting guides, competitive technical summaries, and product training materials.
• Ensure collateral is accurate, current, differentiated, version-controlled, and globally accessible.
• Partner with Product Management to align technical collateral with market positioning and launch priorities.
• Provide FAEs and commercial teams with technical tools required to win commercial opportunities including data packages, process guidance, benchmark data, competitive positioning support, and troubleshooting support.
• Support strategic customer design-in opportunities for released products when deeper technical engagement is required.
• Prioritize technical resources against high-value commercial opportunities.
• Support strategic customer engagement for development materials where customer feedback can shape product direction.
• Participate directly in selected next-generation customer opportunities with R&D and FAEs.
• Translate customer learning into product requirements, test priorities, readiness gaps, and commercialization plans.
• Partner with R&D to improve product transfer and readiness.
• Partner with Product Management to align technical capabilities with market needs.
• Partner with Quality / Metrology to ensure relevant measurement methods and data integrity.
• Partner with Operations to support manufacturability and scale-up.
• Establish intake, prioritization, resource planning, and review cadence.
• Define KPIs tied to commercialization outcomes including time-to-first-data, time-to-qualification, product readiness cycle time, technical response time, evaluation-to-win conversion support, and collateral readiness at launch.
• Lead structured problem solving for critical product or customer issues.
• Build closed-loop voice-of-customer systems that continuously improve products and application guidance.

BACKGROUND PROFILE

• BS/MS/PhD in Chemical Engineering, Materials Science, Chemistry, Physics, or related field
• 12+ years in semiconductor materials, process engineering, applications engineering, or advanced packaging
• 5+ years leading technical teams
• Strong understanding of customer qualification flows and semiconductor process integration
• Proven success leading through complexity and organizational change

Preferred

• Experience in lithography materials, packaging materials, temporary bonding/debonding, or process chemicals
• Experience leading product commercialization / NPI processes
• Global experience supporting customers across Asia, US, and Europe
• Strong data discipline (DOE, correlation studies, SPC, GR&R)
• Experience with quality systems, FMEA, CAPA, or structured problem solving