Senior Systems Software Engineer

About Us:

How many companies can say they’ve been in business for over 177 years?!

Here at ZEISS, we certainly can! As the pioneers of science, ZEISS handles the everchanging environments in a fast-paced world, meeting it with cutting edge of technologies and continuous advancements. ZEISS believes that innovation and technology are the key to a sustainable future and solutions for global change. We have a diverse range of portfolios throughout the ZEISS family in segments like, Industrial Quality & Research, Medical Technology, Consumer Markets and Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology. We are a global company with over 42,000 employees and have over 4,000 in the US and Canada alone! Make a difference, come join the team!

What’s the Role?

The Senior Systems Software Engineer – Industrial CT Automation at ZEISS Industrial Quality Services (IQS) is a key individual contributor responsible for designing and implementing systems software that connects third-party automation systems to the ZEISS Inspect evaluation platform. The role focuses on building robust, scalable back-end services (primarily gRPC), ensuring reliability, and developing test/DevOps pipelines for production-grade deployments in semiconductor advanced packaging. The engineer collaborates with internal teams across automation, controls, metrology, and machine learning to translate requirements into production-ready solutions, improve fault tolerance and observability, and support global deployments in customer fabs.

Sound Interesting?

Here’s what you’ll do:

•  Design and implement back-end services and interfaces (primarily gRPC) that integrate third-party automation systems with ZEISS Inspect for CT-based advanced packaging inspection.
• Own service-level concerns including performance, reliability, observability, fault tolerance, and secure deployment of production services.
• Develop and maintain automated test pipelines (unit, integration, hardware-/system-in-the-loop) and contribute to CI/CD workflows (builds, artifacts, deployments).
• Collaborate closely with automation, controls, metrology, and machine learning teams across IQS and SMT to refine requirements and deliver production-ready integrations.
• Implement and tune data exchange/serialization mechanisms (e.g., Protocol Buffers) and support secure, role-appropriate service communication.
• Instrument services for metrics, logging, and tracing to support robust monitoring and rapid issue diagnosis.
• Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and continuous improvement of engineering practices, coding standards, and architecture patterns.
• Produce clear technical documentation and operational runbooks for deployment, support, and handover to operations and field organizations.
• Support investigation and resolution of escalated production issues related to CT automation software components.

Do you qualify?

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical/Computer Engineering, or a related field; Master’s degree preferred.

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience in back-end or systems software roles.

• Strong coding proficiency in C++ and C# with working proficiency in Python.

• Demonstrated experience building server architectures and networked services (ideally gRPC or similar RPC frameworks).

• Hands-on experience with DevOps and testing pipelines (e.g., Git-based CI, automated builds/tests, artifact management, deployments).

• Solid software engineering fundamentals: version control, code reviews, debugging/profiling, and writing maintainable, testable code.

​Good-to-Haves:

• Experience with industrial/automation systems: robots, motion controllers, PLCs, machine controllers, or factory MES.

• Experience with Windows and Linux service development, containerization (e.g., Docker), and orchestration environments.

• Knowledge of observability practices (metrics/logging/tracing) and performance tuning for high-throughput systems.

• Familiarity with data exchange/serialization (Protocol Buffers) and secure service communication / RBAC concepts.

• Experience with imaging/vision, CT, metrology, or semiconductor manufacturing environments.

Compensation:

• Central/Midwest: $110,000 – $138,000 per year

• San Francisco Bay Area: $149,000 – $186,000 per year

Your ZEISS Recruiting Team:

Zeiss provides Equal Employment Opportunity without unlawful regard to an Applicants race, color, religion, creed, sex, gender, marital status, age, national origin or ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, military or veteran status, citizen status, sexual orientation, pregnancy (includes childbirth, breastfeeding or related medical condition), genetic predisposition, carrier status, gender expression or identity, including transgender identity, or any other class or characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law of the employee (or the people with whom the employee associates, including relatives and friends).