Sr. Manager of AI Engineering: Agentic Knowledge Store

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Job Description

Sr. Manager of AI Engineering: Agentic Knowledge Store

Hybrid- San Jose, CA office 3/2

Tokyo Electron (TEL) is a leader in semiconductor manufacturing equipment. We make equipment for key parts of the manufacturing process in the world’s largest foundries. TEL Technology AI and Design (TTAD) is our Silicon Valley AI lab, where we do groundbreaking, long-term research and technology development in AI for semiconductor equipment.

One of our projects relates to creating a knowledge store that will support the autonomous fab, and all research activities associated with it. We are looking for an experienced engineering leader who can provide leadership for a team across multiple locations and time zones, as well as manage a small local team. Thetechnologies used include ontology-based ingestion, multiple latent spaces, multi-modal ingestion and retrieval, anti-hallucination techniques, advanced provenance strategies, and a very heterogeneous data storage model.

This is a people management position, reporting to the Director of TTAD.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end delivery of AI (AI, Machine learning, Large Language Models, and other techniques) programs, including research, solution or model development, evaluation, and prototype development.
• Partner with process, equipment, field-service, and IT organizations to source domain data and expertise, engage subject-matter experts, and validate results against real engineering problems.
• Coordinate with TEL headquarters and business units on requirements, data-sharing and confidentiality constraints, and deployment; represent the team in executive and program reviews.
• Drive make-vs-buy decisions: adopt commodity tools and platforms where appropriate while concentrating internal effort on differentiated, TEL-specific capabilities.
• Support intellectual-property development: invention disclosures, prior-art review, and collaboration with patent counsel; maintain publication and disclosure hygiene within the team.
• Establish and enforce engineering standards: data quality and provenance practices, evaluation-first development, reproducibility, and responsible use of AI.
• Ensure team compliance with company policies regarding confidential, customer-committed, and export-controlled information.
• Establish and execute evaluation governance (metrics, test strategy, regression, experiment tracking).
• Oversee roadmap planning, resource allocation, and risk management; implement corrective actions.
• Willing and able to travel overseas (east Asia) 3-5 times per year
• Willing and able to collaborate with colleagues in east Asia some evenings
• Perform other duties as assigned

Supervisory and/or Leadership Responsibilities

• Lead, grow, and develop a team of AI engineers, research scientists, and software engineers, including hiring, performance management, mentoring, career development, and succession planning.
• Own team delivery: scope project phases, define interfaces and dependencies, manage schedule and resources, and hold the team to measurable, evaluation-gated progress.
• Provide technical direction and review within the team's domain; maintain sufficient hands-on depth to evaluate designs, experiments, and results critically.
• Conduct performance reviews and pay reviews; may participate in hiring and, in accordance with company policy, termination decisions.
• Understand and interpret the higher-level policy and set team objectives, establish development plans, and ensure consistent execution against quality and governance standards.
• Oversee workload distribution, staffing strategies, and cross-team resource planning to optimize productivity and outcomes.
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement, engineering excellence, and responsible AI.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of relevant engineering experience (such as computer science/AI research, software engineering, machine learning, scheduling and planning, or knowledge representation)
• 4+ years of experience with complex hardware + software systems
• MUST HAVE: 2+ years of small-group direct people management experience
• Expertise in leading techniques for semantic capture, search, and embedding spaces
• PhD or MSc in Computer Science or adjacent areas, or BSc with 10+ years of AI/ML/Comp Sci research excellence required

Diversity creates an innovative culture. TEL US is an Equal Employment Opportunity / Affirmative Action employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law.

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