The Role
G2 is T1 Energy’s new TOPCon solar cell fab in Rockdale, Texas. Every cell we make starts in wet process: texture, rear polish, and glass removal. When these tools stop, the fab stops. We’re hiring Equipment Engineers to keep them running.
You’ll own a set of wet chemical tools, from install through high-volume production. The set covers batch texture, RCA-clean rear polish benches, and inline BSG and PSG removal strip tools. It’s a hands-on role: most of your day is at the tool, and you’ll be trusted to make the engineering calls that keep it running.
This is an on-site role at G2 in Rockdale, Texas, day shift supporting a 24/7 fab, with an on-call rotation for critical tool-downs, and cleanroom and sub-fab work in full chemical PPE. You’ll be building a fab from the ground up: your PMs, your procedures, and your fixes become the standard, and the calls on your tools are yours to make.
What You'll Do
• Own OEE, availability, MTBF, and MTTR for your toolset.
• Be first on the tool when it goes down. Make it safe, diagnose the failed component, and restore it. When you escalate to the vendor, bring clear data.
• Close root cause on chronic failures, wafer breakage, and leaks using 8D, FMEA, and Pareto, and verify the fixes hold.
• Analyze alarm histories, maintenance records, and tool data in JMP, SQL, Python, or Excel to spot failure trends before they cause downtime.
• Own the PM schedule, refine vendor PM procedures, and set critical-spares levels, then adjust both from failure history.
• Keep interlocks, leak detection, and exhaust and scrubber interfaces working on tools running HF, NaOH, and HCl. You’ll do this together with EHS.
• Work with Process Engineering on bath life, chemical change-out, and concentration-control hardware.
• Bring tools through install, SAT, and qualification into production. Document procedures and train the technicians who run them.
Who You Are
• A hands-on equipment engineer who would rather be at the tool than in a meeting.
• Systematic about failure: you fix the cause, not the symptom, and you check that it held.
• Decisive when a tool is down and the line is waiting.
• A straight communicator with process, production, facilities, EHS, and vendors.
• Comfortable and careful working around aggressive process chemistries.
Qualifications
• A bachelor’s degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, or Mechatronics Engineering, or an associate degree with equivalent hands-on experience.
• 3+ years of hands-on equipment engineering in semiconductor, solar, or similar high-volume manufacturing.
• Hands-on repair of wet bench, wet etch, wet strip, or texturing tools, including pumps, valves, heaters, filtration, and wafer handling.
• Component-level troubleshooting from electrical schematics, pneumatic drawings, P&IDs, and PLC/HMI diagnostics.
• A track record of eliminating a chronic equipment failure, not just repairing it again.
• Safe working practice with hazardous chemicals, chemical-compatible materials (quartz, PVDF, PTFE, PFA), and LOTO.
• Preferred: solar cell (TOPCon, PERC, or HJT) or semiconductor fab experience.
• Preferred: greenfield tool install, SAT, and ramp experience.
About T1 Energy
At T1 Energy (NYSE: TE), we build energy. We are an American solar manufacturer building the future of energy abundance. From our headquarters in Austin, Texas, we’re pioneering a domestic solar supply chain with one mission: to invigorate America with scalable, reliable, and low-cost energy.
We started with G1_Dallas, one of the most advanced solar manufacturing facilities in the world. The 5GW facility is located in Wilmer, Texas. It has the capacity to produce more than 20,000 solar modules a day for solar farms that power American homes, businesses, and keep our energy grids resilient.
Next is G2_Austin: Our new solar cell fab in Rockdale, Texas. Its first 2.1GW phase is designed to produce next-generation TOPCon cells beginning in 2027. As the fab grows, it’s expected to support up to…