Apple
Physical Failure Analysis Engineer
Austin, Texas · Full-time · Posted Oct 28, 2026
- Experience
- B.S. with 4+ years, A.A. with 6+ years, or High School Diploma with 8+ years of relevant hands-on FA sample prep experience.
- Education
- B.S., A.A., or High School Diploma.
About the job
Prepares and characterizes silicon, packaged components, and multilayer boards to isolate failure causes and support engineering teams.
What you'll do
- Assess failure-analysis requests and choose preparation methods with cross-functional teams.
- Perform sample preparation, including cross-sectioning, polishing, decapsulation, and chemical or plasma etching.
- Document and communicate findings, maintain sample traceability, and qualify preparation equipment and methods.
What they ask for
- Deep understanding of failure-analysis methods, defect-isolation workflows, and sample-preparation principles.
- Hands-on experience with mechanical cross-sectioning, encapsulation, iterative planar polishing, CNC-based polishers, decapsulation, and parallel lapping of multilayer boards and packaged die.
- Proficiency with wet and dry etching, optical microscopy, and basic mechanical and microelectronic assemblies.
- Strong technical writing and communication skills in English; able to troubleshoot independently and work across multidisciplinary teams.
Nice to have
- Experience with Focused Ion Beam (FIB), circuit edit, broad-beam argon ion milling (BIB), SEM, or EDS.
- Experience with advanced packaging, nano-probing or micro-probing sample preparation, FT-IR, GC, or developing SOPs and training materials.
Tools
CNC-based polishers, optical microscopy, SEM, EDS, Focused Ion Beam (FIB), FT-IR, GC, Keynote
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative