Optical Thin Film Coating Engineer

Imagine what you could do here! At Apple, great ideas have a way of becoming great products, services, and customer experiences very quickly. Bring passion and dedication to your job and you will help to create the next generation of the world's finest electronic devices. As an Optical Thin Film Coating Engineer within the Coating Materials Product Design organization, you will be our in-region technical presence — accelerating development cycles, building deep partnerships with our equipment and manufacturing partners, and helping to build the data foundation that will drive the next generation coating designs and processes.

Description

As a member of the Coating Materials Product Design Team, you will be based in the heart of Apple's optical thin film coating manufacturing and development ecosystem, working directly with equipment partners, contract manufacturers, and cross-functional peers to accelerate development progress and ship industry leading coatings. You will play an active role in coating evaluation, characterization, and data analysis. You will drive vendor technical discussions, support qualification of coatings into Apple products, and help ensure that data collected from development and production processes is rigorous and fit for purpose, including supporting calibration of material and process simulation models. You’ll also support and contribute to optical thin film coating design and will work closely with the broader global team to define and drive strategic efforts, and surface in-region insights for faster, better decisions. This role involves significant travel, including domestic travel within China, periodic travel to Japan, and occasional travel to the US.

Minimum Qualifications

MS or PhD in Physics, Optical Sciences, Material Science or related fields
5+ years relevant experience in optical thin film coating or related process development
Expertise in thin film deposition processes and equipment, especially sputtering and evaporation
Experience with thin film characterization methods and statistical data analysis
Strong technical communication skills in both Mandarin and English
Ability to work effectively across time zones and cultures as part of a distributed team
Willingnes and ability to travel significantly, including domestically within China as well as to Japan and the US

Preferred Qualifications

Experience designing thin film interference coatings, including with commercial design packages and numerical optimization methods with cosmetic and functional requirements
Experience working with or managing external coating vendors and contract manufacturers
Familiarity with process simulation or modeling tools, and experience with structured data collection for model calibration
Experience in consumer electronics environment
Familiarity with AI-assisted design and analysis workflows
Ability to code or script for analysis or modeling purposes
Strong organizational skills and ability to manage multiple vendor relationships and development workstreams simultaneously
Proven ability to work independently while staying tightly aligned with a remote team
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills