Lead Platform Infrastructure Engineer

To make electronics, you need chips, wafers, transistors, reticles, and... To make these, you must see, test and manufacture them at scale—faster and better than ever before. That's where KLA comes in. Whether you're early in your career or an experienced professional, you'll solve complex challenges, work alongside brilliant minds and help shape the future of technology.

Group/Division

The Semiconductor Products and Customers (Semi PC) business unit designs, builds and sells KLA’s product portfolio to help chip manufacturers meet high-quality standards for technologies like AI, data centers, automotive and electronic devices. Our inspection, metrology, and analytics systems detect and monitor defects across logic and memory chips, specialty semiconductors, wafers, reticles, advanced packaging, process equipment and materials. We also develop technologies for specialty processes, IC substrates, and PCB manufacturing, including etch and deposition, component inspection, and imaging and analytics. The Film and Scatterometry Technology (FaST) division delivers industry-leading metrology solutions essential to advanced semiconductor manufacturing. Its portfolio includes systems for measuring film thickness, critical dimensions, composition, and resistivity—key to developing and scaling next-gen IC processes. FaST partners closely with customers from early R&D through high-volume production, ensuring performance and process alignment.

What You'll Do

In this role, you will play a key part in advancing business priorities by delivering high-impact work across your area of expertise.

Ready to take your Kubernetes and infrastructure skills to the next level?

We’re looking for a Lead Platform Infrastructure Engineer to help build and automate the infrastructure that powers our applications. You’ll work alongside experienced platform engineers to deploy and manage Kubernetes clusters, automate environment builds, improve monitoring and platform reliability, and make it easier for application teams to deploy and operate their services.

You’ll have the opportunity to own meaningful pieces of the platform from end to end, strengthen your Kubernetes and automation expertise, participate in technical design and code reviews, and take on increasingly complex challenges as your skills grow.

Required qualifications 

• At least 4 years running production Kubernetes at scale, including cluster installation, upgrades and troubleshooting beyond managed cloud services. 

• Demonstrated technical leadership: owning architecture for a platform or major subsystem and guiding the work of other engineers. 

• Deep Linux administration skills, plus solid knowledge of networking (TCP/IP, DNS, load balancing, VLANs) and storage concepts. 

• Hands-on experience with infrastructure as code and configuration management, such as Terraform, Ansible or Helm. 

• Proficiency in at least one programming language (Go or Python preferred) and in shell scripting. 

• Experience with containers, container image builds, registries and CI/CD systems. 

• Practical experience with monitoring and observability tooling such as Prometheus, Grafana and OpenTelemetry. 

• Strong written and verbal communication, with the ability to explain technical trade-offs to engineers, managers and customers. 

Preferred qualifications 

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) or equivalent. 

• Experience with on-premises and edge Kubernetes distributions (for example RKE2, k3s, OpenShift or Rancher) and with air-gapped installations. 

• Experience with virtualization platforms (VMware, KVM or Hyper-V) and with server and network hardware configuration. 

• Familiarity with GitOps tooling, service mesh (Istio or Linkerd) and policy engines (OPA Gatekeeper or Kyverno). 

• Background running data-intensive or HPC workloads, including GPU scheduling, distributed storage or SQL/NoSQL databases on Kubernetes. 

• Experience delivering software into semiconductor, manufacturing or other regulated industrial environments. 

• Exposure to public cloud platforms (Azure, AWS or GCP) and hybrid architectures. 

Minimum Qualifications

Master's Level Degree and related work experience of 6 years; Bachelor's Level Degree and related work experience of 8 years

About KLA

We provide advanced inspection tools, metrology systems, process solutions, and computational analytics that make electronics possible, tackling complex challenges. From electron and photon optics to machine learning and data analytics, we seek perfection at the most fundamental level of matter in the universe. If you want to make electronics that push industries forward and make the world a better place, join us.

Total Rewards

Base Pay Range: $186,200.00 - $316,500.00 Annually
Primary Location: USA-CA-Milpitas-KLA

KLA’s total rewards package for employees may also include participation in performance incentive programs and eligibility for additional benefits including but not limited to: medical, dental, vision, life, and other voluntary benefits, 401(K) including company matching, employee stock purchase program (ESPP), student debt assistance, tuition reimbursement program, development and career growth opportunities and programs, financial planning benefits, wellness benefits including an employee assistance program (EAP), paid time off and paid company holidays, and family care and bonding leave.

Interns are eligible for some of the benefits listed. Our pay ranges are determined by role, level, and location. The range displayed reflects the pay for this position in the primary location identified in this posting. Actual pay depends on several factors, including state minimum pay wage rates, location, job-related skills, experience, and relevant education level or training. We are committed to complying with all applicable federal and state minimum wage requirements where applicable. If applicable, your recruiter can share more about the specific pay range for your preferred location during the hiring process.

Use of AI Statement 

At KLA, our interviews seek to understand your individual skills, problem-solving approach and authentic thinking. To ensure a fair and consistent evaluation, the use of AI, recording tools or other technologies to generate, suggest or provide responses during interviews—whether virtual or in person—is not permitted unless explicitly approved in advance as part of a reasonable accommodation or invited by the interviewer. Use of these tools may interfere with our ability to evaluate your individual qualifications and affect your candidacy. KLA is committed to advancing innovation through responsible AI, and we value candidates who share this mindset.

Equal Opportunity Statement

KLA is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We will ensure that qualified individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us at [email protected] or at +1-408-352-2808 to request accommodation.

For additional information, view the US Know Your Rights poster on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website.