Fab Equipment Manager

We're Hiring: Fab Equipment Manager

Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)

Employment Type: Full-Time

Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior

Work Arrangement: Fully Remote

About Us

We are a globally focused organization committed to advancing semiconductor fabrication, equipment engineering, manufacturing reliability, and technology-driven production across diverse markets.

Our teams collaborate across fab operations, equipment engineering, process engineering, yield, facilities, automation, quality, supply chain, EHS, procurement, and technology partners to maintain highly reliable and productive semiconductor manufacturing environments.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Fab Equipment Manager to lead semiconductor fabrication equipment strategy, engineering, maintenance, installation, qualification, optimization, and lifecycle management.

The ideal candidate will oversee equipment performance across critical fab process areas, ensuring high availability, stable process capability, efficient capacity utilization, rapid issue resolution, and safe operation while supporting technology transitions, production ramps, and fab expansion programs.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and implement fab equipment strategies aligned with manufacturing, technology, capacity, quality, and business objectives.
• Lead equipment engineering and maintenance operations across semiconductor fabrication areas.
• Manage equipment engineers, technicians, specialists, and technical support teams.
• Establish equipment performance standards, reliability targets, maintenance strategies, and operational requirements.
• Manage equipment supporting lithography, deposition, etch, clean, diffusion, ion implantation, CMP, metrology, inspection, wafer handling, and related processes.
• Monitor equipment availability, utilization, uptime, throughput, cycle time, and production impact.
• Develop preventive, predictive, condition-based, and corrective maintenance programs.
• Optimize maintenance frequencies and procedures using equipment history, failure data, process requirements, and reliability analysis.
• Lead troubleshooting and recovery of complex semiconductor fab equipment failures.
• Conduct root-cause analysis for equipment failures, recurring faults, process interruptions, and yield-impacting events.
• Identify equipment-related yield detractors and coordinate corrective actions with process and yield engineering teams.
• Establish equipment recovery plans and escalation procedures for critical failures and production disruptions.
• Manage equipment installation, relocation, commissioning, qualification, and production release.
• Coordinate factory acceptance testing, site acceptance testing, equipment qualification, and performance validation.
• Support equipment matching, process qualification, recipe transfer, and technology-node transitions.
• Manage equipment capacity planning and identify bottlenecks affecting wafer starts, throughput, and cycle time.
• Support fab expansions, capacity increases, new technology introductions, and manufacturing ramp programs.
• Evaluate new equipment technologies, architectures, suppliers, and technical solutions.
• Develop technical specifications, equipment requirements, acceptance criteria, and qualification plans.
• Lead technical evaluations and procurement activities for new semiconductor equipment.
• Develop capital expenditure proposals covering equipment cost, capacity benefits, technical risks, lifecycle costs, and ROI.
• Manage equipment suppliers, OEMs, contractors, system integrators, and field-service organizations.
• Establish vendor SLAs, response-time requirements, warranty conditions, spare-parts commitments, and technical support standards.
• Monitor supplier performance, equipment quality, service responsiveness, spare-parts availability, and issue-resolution effectiveness.
• Manage equipment lifecycle plans covering acquisition, installation, qualification, operation, upgrades, refurbishment, and retirement.
• Identify obsolete equipment, components, software, and controls and develop mitigation or replacement strategies.
• Coordinate equipment upgrades, retrofits, software releases, hardware modifications, and engineering changes.
• Maintain equipment configuration control and ensure changes are properly reviewed, documented, tested, and released.
• Integrate equipment with MES, factory automation, equipment-control systems, data platforms, and manufacturing analytics.
• Expand equipment monitoring using sensors, fault detection, condition monitoring, and advanced diagnostics.
• Apply predictive analytics, machine learning, and AI-enabled tools to anticipate equipment degradation and failures.
• Analyze equipment data to identify performance trends, abnormal behavior, and reliability improvement opportunities.
• Monitor equipment impact on process capability, defectivity, yield, and product quality.
• Work with process engineering to optimize equipment operating windows, recipes, and process stability.
• Coordinate with facilities teams to ensure equipment receives reliable power, gases, chemicals, water, vacuum, exhaust, cooling, and environmental services.
• Ensure equipment installation and operation meet cleanroom, chemical, electrical, mechanical, machine-safety, and environmental requirements.
• Support equipment safety assessments, MOC, risk reviews, incident investigations, and emergency-response planning.
• Establish contingency plans for critical equipment failures, utility interruptions, automation outages, and other fab disruptions.
• Manage critical spare parts, consumables, maintenance materials, tooling, and technical resources.
• Optimize spare-parts inventory based on equipment criticality, failure probability, lead times, and business impact.
• Monitor equipment maintenance costs, service contracts, energy consumption, and lifecycle expenditure.
• Identify opportunities to reduce maintenance costs, downtime, energy use, and equipment-related production losses.
• Support shutdowns, planned maintenance windows, fab upgrades, equipment moves, and major engineering projects.
• Coordinate equipment readiness for production ramps and high-volume manufacturing.
• Develop equipment documentation, maintenance procedures, troubleshooting guides, engineering standards, and technical records.
• Train and develop equipment engineers and technicians through structured competency and certification programs.
• Promote TPM, Lean, Six Sigma, reliability engineering, and continuous-improvement methodologies.
• Benchmark equipment performance against internal standards, historical performance, suppliers, and industry practices.
• Provide management with regular reports covering equipment availability, reliability, capacity, downtime, costs, risks, projects, and improvement initiatives.

Key Performance Indicators

• Equipment availability
• Equipment uptime
• Equipment utilization
• Overall equipment effectiveness
• Mean time between failures
• Mean time to repair
• Equipment failure frequency
• Unplanned equipment downtime
• Planned maintenance downtime
• Preventive maintenance compliance
• Predictive maintenance effectiveness
• Equipment recovery time
• Equipment throughput
• Equipment cycle time
• Capacity utilization
• Equipment bottleneck reduction
• Equipment-related yield loss
• Equipment-related defect rate
• Process capability
• Equipment qualification cycle time
• Installation and commissioning performance
• Acceptance-test performance
• Production ramp-up time
• Technology transition readiness
• Engineering change effectiveness
• Spare-parts availability
• Critical spare inventory accuracy
• Maintenance cost per wafer
• Equipment lifecycle cost
• Equipment energy consumption
• Vendor SLA compliance
• Supplier response time
• Service contract performance
• Equipment upgrade success rate
• Capital project delivery
• Capex budget adherence
• Equipment project ROI
• Safety incidents
• Equipment compliance
• Training and certification completion
• Predictive failure detection accuracy
• Continuous-improvement savings

Ideal Candidate

The successful candidate should have strong experience in semiconductor fab equipment engineering, wafer fabrication, semiconductor equipment maintenance, manufacturing engineering, or advanced electronics manufacturing, preferably within high-volume semiconductor fabs.

The candidate should demonstrate:

• Proven experience managing semiconductor fab equipment engineering or maintenance teams.
• Strong understanding of semiconductor fabrication processes and associated equipment.
• Knowledge of lithography, deposition, etch, clean, diffusion, implantation, CMP, metrology, inspection, or wafer-handling equipment.
• Strong understanding of vacuum systems, robotics, motion control, RF systems, optics, thermal systems, sensors, pneumatics, and precision equipment.
• Experience with preventive, predictive, condition-based, and corrective maintenance.
• Strong troubleshooting, failure analysis, and root-cause investigation capabilities.
• Experience managing equipment installation, commissioning, qualification, and production release.
• Understanding of equipment-process interaction and equipment impact on yield and defectivity.
• Experience working with semiconductor equipment OEMs, suppliers, contractors, and service organizations.
• Strong knowledge of equipment lifecycle management, obsolescence, upgrades, and spare-parts strategy.
• Experience with MES, factory automation, equipment-control systems, FDC, data analytics, or predictive maintenance platforms.
• Strong understanding of cleanroom operations and semiconductor equipment safety requirements.
• Experience managing equipment capital projects, procurement, budgets, and technical evaluations.
• Familiarity with reliability engineering, TPM, Lean, Six Sigma, or continuous-improvement methods.
• Strong analytical and data-driven problem-solving skills.
• Excellent project-management and cross-functional leadership capabilities.
• Strong communication, technical documentation, and presentation skills.
• Ability to manage multiple equipment programs, suppliers, priorities, and deadlines.
• Experience working with international and distributed teams.