Vice President, Product Engineering

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The Vice President of Product Engineering is the senior leader accountable for product engineering strategy, execution, and organizational performance across multiple wafer fabrication sites producing indium phosphide (InP)-based optoelectronic devices. This role will report to the EVP of Global Fabs and be responsible for building and leading a high-performing, data-driven product engineering organization that translates customer and business requirements into stable, scalable, high-yielding, and reliable manufacturing solutions.

The VP will partner closely with wafer-fab operations, process engineering, device design, epitaxy, test, reliability, quality, supply chain, packaging, sales, and program management. The successful candidate will establish common methods and priorities across fabs while ensuring each product is supported through development, qualification, production ramp, sustaining, cost reduction, and end-of-life management.

Key Responsibilities

Product Engineering Leadership

- Own the global product engineering strategy, operating model, staffing plan, technical roadmap, and budget for multiple InP wafer fabs.
- Lead, develop, and retain product engineering leaders and technical teams responsible for new product introduction, production ramp, sustaining engineering, yield improvement, test strategy, product characterization, and cost reduction.
- Define clear product ownership, decision rights, escalation paths, and performance expectations across sites.
- Create a culture of technical rigor, accountability, rapid problem solving, cross-functional collaboration, and continuous improvement.

New Product Introduction and Manufacturing Readiness

- Lead the transfer of new InP-based optoelectronic products from design and development into qualified, repeatable, high-volume manufacturing.
- Establish product release criteria, manufacturing readiness reviews, qualification plans, control plans, test limits, data requirements, and production ramp plans.
- Ensure robust design-for-manufacturability, design-for-test, and design-for-reliability practices are incorporated early in the product lifecycle.
- Coordinate product and process transfers between fabs, ensuring equivalency, documentation, change control, risk management, and customer requirements are addressed.

Yield, Performance, Reliability, and Cost

- Own product yield, electrical and optical performance, test yield, outgoing quality, product reliability, and cost improvement roadmaps.
- Drive structured problem solving using statistical process control, design of experiments, fault isolation, root-cause analysis, failure analysis, and corrective and preventive action methods.
- Lead cross-functional improvement programs addressing wafer-level variation, device performance, defectivity, parametric yield, test coverage, reliability margins, and product cost.
- Establish methods to correlate epitaxy, wafer fabrication, wafer-level test, die-level test, packaging, final test, and field performance data.
- Ensure product specifications, guard bands, screening methods, and test limits are technically justified and aligned with customer and reliability requirements.

Multi-Fab Governance and Operational Excellence

- Standardize product engineering processes, metrics, data systems, documentation, and technical reviews across manufacturing sites while accounting for site-specific capabilities.
- Chair regular product performance, yield, quality, reliability, and manufacturing readiness reviews with fab and functional leaders.
- Develop capacity and resource plans aligned with product demand, technology roadmaps, fab capabilities, and business priorities.
- Partner with operations and process engineering to resolve constraints, improve cycle time, reduce variability, and sustain production continuity.
- Provide executive-level visibility into product risks, recovery plans, customer impacts, investment needs, and business tradeoffs.

Customer, Quality, and Business Partnership

- Serve as the senior technical interface for critical product performance, yield, quality, reliability, and customer escalation matters.
- Partner with Quality to ensure compliance with applicable quality management systems, product qualification requirements, change-control processes, and customer-specific standards.
- Support product portfolio decisions with fact-based assessments of technical readiness, manufacturing risk, yield, cost, capital requirements, and lifecycle economics.
- Work with commercial and program teams to translate customer requirements into executable product and manufacturing plans.
- Protect intellectual property and ensure disciplined handling of technical, customer, and manufacturing information.

Required Qualifications

- Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, materials science, physics, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, or a related technical field; an advanced technical or business degree is strongly preferred.
- Typically 15 or more years of progressive experience in semiconductor, photonics, or optoelectronic product engineering, including substantial leadership experience in a manufacturing environment.
- Demonstrated success leading product engineering across multiple products, technologies, manufacturing sites, or geographically distributed teams.
- Deep understanding of semiconductor or optoelectronic device manufacturing, preferably including compound semiconductor materials, epitaxy, wafer fabrication, optical and electrical test, reliability, and packaging interfaces.
- Proven record of improving yield, product performance, reliability, manufacturing stability, cycle time, and cost through data-driven engineering.
- Strong knowledge of new product introduction, product qualification, production ramp, configuration and change control, statistical methods, and structured problem-solving tools.
- Experience building organizations, developing leaders, managing technical talent, and prioritizing resources across a complex product portfolio.
- Executive-level communication skills and the ability to influence engineering, operations, quality, commercial, finance, and customer organizations.
- Ability to travel regularly among wafer-fab locations, suppliers, partners, and customer sites as business needs require.

Preferred Experience

- Experience with InP-based lasers, photodetectors, modulators, photonic integrated circuits, or related optoelectronic components.
- Experience supporting high-volume wafer fabrication and downstream assembly and test operations for telecom, datacom, sensing, aerospace, defense, or other high-reliability markets.
- Familiarity with automated data systems, manufacturing execution systems, product lifecycle management, statistical analysis platforms, and advanced analytics.
- Experience with fab-to-fab product transfer, external foundry or supplier management, and customer qualification programs.
- Working knowledge of relevant semiconductor and quality standards, such as ISO 9001 and applicable automotive, telecom, aerospace, or customer-specific requirements.

Leadership Attributes

- Strategic thinker who can translate business objectives into a practical technical and organizational roadmap.
- Visible, hands-on leader who is comfortable moving between executive decisions and detailed technical reviews.
- Decisive and transparent, with sound judgment in balancing speed, risk, quality, cost, and customer commitments.
- Collaborative enterprise leader who builds alignment across sites and functions without sacrificing accountability.
- Developer of people who creates strong succession plans and expands organizational capability.

Measures of Success

- Predictable, on-time qualification and production ramp of new products.
- Sustained improvements in wafer yield, test yield, product performance, reliability, outgoing quality, and cost.
- Reduced product variability, excursion frequency, issue-resolution time, and customer disruption.
- Consistent product engineering processes, metrics, and technical governance across all wafer fabs.
- A strong leadership bench and a scalable product engineering organization aligned with the company’s growth plans.

Pay Range:
E100-USA-1 :$0.00 - $0.00
Disclaimer:

Final base salary for the successful candidate will depend on multiple factors, including but not limited to, job location, where work will be performed, qualifications, work history and relevant experience. With our continual goal of making Lumentum a best place to work for our employees, we strive to offer employees competitive total compensation packages, which may include annual bonus, commission for certain sales roles, equity, and health and welfare benefits.