Chemistry Lab Technician

NVIDIA NVIDIA · Semiconductors · Santa Clara, CA

NVIDIA is seeking a Chemistry Lab Technician for its new Wet Chemical Lab and Workshop, focusing on metallurgical materials science. The role involves executing experiments, analyzing data, and maintaining the lab to support the development of future datacenter products. Requires a strong chemistry or materials science background with practical lab experience and excellent communication skills.

What you'd actually do

  1. Corrosion & Erosion Testing: Performing erosion-corrosion experiments for various metals and alloys in propylene glycol (PG) based coolant environments, simulating high-flow datacenter conditions at elevated temperatures.
  2. Material Compatibility: Carry out long-term compatibility studies of elastomers, seals, and polymers with PG coolants to predict degradation and service life.
  3. Failure Analysis & Metallography: Perform precision cross-sectioning, mounting, and polishing of metallurgical samples. Analyze samples for erosion, corrosion pitting, and manufacturing defects using optical and electron microscopy.
  4. Heterogeneous Integration: Investigate and optimize bonding processes between metals, ceramics, and plastics to ensure high mechanical reliability and thermal performance under thermal cycling.
  5. Lab Operations: Maintain wet chemistry lab standards, prepare complex and potentially corrosive chemical solutions, and manage characterization equipment calibration and safety.

Skills

Required

  • B.S. or equivalent experience in Materials Science, Chemistry, Electrochemistry, Chemical Engineering, or a related field with 2+ years of relevant industry experience in a laboratory setting.
  • Very strong wet chemistry laboratory skills (titration, pH control, solution preparation, etc.)
  • Practical experience operating analytical instruments (FTIR, GC-MS, XPS, optical microscopy, SEM/EDS, tensile/compression testing, or similar).
  • High adaptability; ability to switch between chemistry, physics, and engineering tasks daily.
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
  • Excellent documentation and data reporting skills.

Nice to have

  • Practical experience in high-vacuum physical vapor deposition techniques including sputter deposition and e-beam evaporation
  • First-principles understanding of analytical instrumentation
  • Direct experience performing ASTM test methods
  • Hands-on experience with potentiostat-based accelerated corrosion testing including apparatus setup

What the JD emphasized

  • strong chemistry or materials science foundation
  • designing and implementing laboratory experiments
  • proven skills and know-how to thrive in a fast-paced and highly innovative engineering workplace
  • strong communicator
  • collecting relevant data from a wide variety of sources
  • formatting that data in a concise and accurate way
  • communicating your findings on a regular basis