3D Process Engineer III

The 3D Printing Process team at Align Technology is looking for a 3D Process Engineer III at the San Jose, CA, location. This on-site role focuses on hands-on experimentation and process development within a lab setting. The ideal candidate will lead efforts to create, refine and enhance 3D printing and post-processing techniques, while also supporting R&D initiatives for emerging materials and product concepts. This position offers a unique opportunity to collaborate across software, materials, and design teams to address complex challenges in additive manufacturing.

• Independently operate new additive manufacturing equipment and post processing equipment.
• Perform material and product testing using standard and non-standard material testing equipment.
• Collect, maintain and organize data in accordance to internal standards and quality requirements.
• Participate, and lead select weekly and bi-weekly technical meetings with cross functional groups
• Present data, findings, and ideas to the process and cross-functional teams on a weekly basis
• Use statistical tools to analyze, interpret, and present experiment results.
• Be responsible for writing, maintaining, and transferring work instructions to manufacturing teams.
• Be responsible for writing, maintaining and supporting protocols for process and equipment qualifications and process transfer.
• Be responsible for writing and maintaining work instructions for Process R&D activities.
• Work closely with cross functional collaborators to support and to receive support on major project milestones.
• Learn and apply the use of design for additive manufacturing (DFAM) principles to support printing and post process development.
• Learn and apply process-structure-property relationship exploration to study, and tune process to match desired performance and accuracy metrics.
• Operate, collect and analyze data from polymer characterization equipment to support process-structure-property explorations.
• Independently design, setup and execute experiments to study process-structure-property relationships for polymer AM systems for the purpose of understanding/optimizing the manufacturing process.
• Collaborate with the Manager, peers and cross functional groups (as necessary) to design experiments and identify deliverables.
• Use and develop methods to collect, process and analyze data from advanced metrology techniques like CT, CMM and similar appliances
• Be responsible for collection, processing and analysis of orthodontic performance data for exploring the relationship between process and performance.
• Create, evaluate, support prototyping of equipment, jigs, fixture and tools necessary for manufacturing process internally or with external support.
• Maintain vendor relationships and be responsible for design review and release of custom equipment.
• Study and develop metrics to explore the process capability of end-to-end pilot manufacturing process for R&D products.
• Responsible for supporting the planning, execution and documentation of experiment results and analysis for regulatory submissions.
• Responsible for serving as SME for internal and external audits related to process development and optimization.
• Support the creation of requirements for manufacturing software such as support generation, slicing, layout etc.
• Serve as a technical liaison for manufacturing software development, prototyping (coding, code editing), and testing.
• Support in test method validation for critical quality monitoring steps.
• Support generation of quality metrics and acceptance criterion for inspection and other in-process monitoring steps.
• Support and participate in calibration, spirit committee, and safety programs.
• Serve as lead for training and transfer of process work instructions and protocols for pilot lines.
• Foster collaboration with cross functional teams, support onboarding and training of technicians.
• Work in a fast-paced environment and meet critical deadlines
• Problem solve issues with attention to detail
• Actively coach, motivate, mentor and provide leadership to peers and Jr. engineers