Blog

In November last year, I made the shift from the beautiful North of the Netherlands, to the complete other side of the country to  ASML. At the moment I’m already working for half a year as a sequence engineer in the D&E department. Hereby a quick overview from IEM to ASML:

At the end of my bachelor IEM, I wanted a bit more technical courses and luckily the RuG had just introduced the Mechanical Engineering master. After a year of courses, I started with a design project at NTS Norma on one of the parts supplied to ASML, which was a bit of playing around with 3D printers and getting introduced to the micrometer accuracy products from NTS Norma. Consequently, the search for a research project started and luckily ASML was looking for a student in the group from Bayu willing to pick up some research. And so, I started in February 2022 with a research project at ASML on the control engineering of the wafer stage. This time with nanometer accuracy (luckily I didn’t have to print this😊).

The project was a collaboration between the TUe, ASML, and the RuG meaning that I had the guidance and commentary from two professors and a PhD student. And while I performed the research from Groningen, it gave me a nice introduction to ASML. I got the chance to look around in ASML, got involved in a lot of research meetings with a wide variety of interesting research topics, and had a lot of experts that I could ask for help. So doing a project within such a company was definitely a nice experience and something I would recommend!

This project was focused on a small part of the machine and so I thought it would be nice to experience the bigger picture. After some talks, I got recommended a job in the sequence engineering department. So after finishing the ME master, I was able to start as a sequence engineer, which is mainly focused on the right side of the V-model (yes, it is really used in practice). So how do you get from component level to system level? On a daily basis, I cooperate with engineers from a lot of different functional clusters on how to combine everything in the factory or at the customer fab. Besides that, I’m also picking up a bit of sequence automation, focusing on reducing the required human interference in the testing of the machines.

A nice part of ASML is that there is a big focus on personal growth and that there are a lot of opportunities in your career. Either within your team or in a completely different department. Due to the size of the company, it can however take a while to find your place in the organization. Luckily, enough time and guidance are provided for the onboarding and for future career steps. All in all, it is definitely an interesting place to look around for a research/design project or your first job!