Head of Nearfield Academy

About Nearfield Instruments

Nearfield Instruments develops advanced metrology solutions for the semiconductor industry. Our technology helps the world’s leading chipmakers measure and control increasingly complex manufacturing processes, enabling the next generation of semiconductor innovation.

Founded in 2016, we have grown from an ambitious start-up into a rapidly expanding global scale-up. As our product portfolio and international organization grow, developing technical knowledge and practical capabilities across our global engineering teams becomes increasingly important.

To support this growth, we are looking for a Head of Nearfield Academy who will build and scale our global technical training organization.

What will you be doing?

As Head of Nearfield Academy, you will define and lead the technical learning strategy for Nearfield’s product portfolio. Your goal is to give our engineers the steepest possible learning curve, from onboarding through expert-level specialization.

You will build a scalable training ecosystem that enables engineers to develop the practical skills required to install, maintain, troubleshoot, upgrade, and support our systems. By accelerating technical competency, you will directly contribute to service excellence, field readiness, customer success, and the continued growth of Nearfield.

This is a role with significant ownership in a fast-paced scale-up environment. You will lead a dedicated team and work closely with Service, Applications, Engineering, Product Management, Manufacturing, Operations, and Customer Support.

Your responsibilities

• Define and execute the vision, strategy, and roadmap for the Nearfield Academy.

• Build and lead a team responsible for training development, coordination, and delivery.

• Establish the Academy as a strategic enabler of service excellence, customer success, and organizational scalability.

• Develop a comprehensive skills matrix for the technical roles supporting our systems.

• Define competency requirements and certification criteria for engineers at different stages of their careers.

• Create structured learning paths that support onboarding, continued development, and expert-level specialization.

• Develop qualification and certification programmes that objectively assess technical readiness and capability.

• Build a comprehensive technical curriculum covering system architecture, product operation, maintenance, troubleshooting, upgrades, applications, safety, and compliance.

• Capture expert knowledge and translate it into practical, scalable learning materials.

• Ensure training content remains aligned with product roadmaps, engineering releases, and insights from the field.

• Identify capability gaps and develop targeted programmes that improve field autonomy and service self-sufficiency.

• Reduce dependency on expert escalations by systematically transferring knowledge and practical skills into the field organization.

• Create a scalable global training model that combines instructor-led, hands-on, virtual, remote, digital, and self-paced learning.

• Oversee the effective use of cleanroom facilities, training systems, modules, classrooms, and virtual learning environments.

• Ensure effective planning, scheduling, and execution of all Academy activities.

• Define and monitor KPIs related to competency development, certification, time-to-productivity, training effectiveness, and asset utilization.

• Ensure training readiness for new product introductions and major technology releases.
  
  

What do we expect from you?

You are an experienced technical learning leader who is passionate about developing people and building technical excellence.

You understand that effective technical training goes beyond creating presentations or organizing courses. It requires a clear competency strategy, strong practical learning experiences, measurable qualification standards, and close collaboration with the experts who design, build, and support our technology.

You combine strategic thinking with hands-on execution. You are comfortable creating structure in an evolving organization and know how to translate complex technical knowledge into learning programmes that improve performance in the field.

You bring

• A bachelor’s or master’s degree in Engineering, Physics, Electronics, Mechatronics, or a related technical field.

• Extensive experience in semiconductor equipment, metrology, inspection, or another advanced capital equipment industry.

• Leadership experience in technical training, field service, customer support, applications engineering, or technical operations.

• Proven experience developing technical curricula, competency frameworks, and qualification or certification programmes.

• Experience leading a technical training organization or multidisciplinary team.

• Strong understanding of technical learning methodologies and adult learning principles.

• The ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear and effective learning experiences.

• Experience building scalable learning solutions for an international organization.

• Strong project, stakeholder, and change-management skills.

• A strategic mindset combined with strong execution capabilities.

• Professional proficiency in English, our shared working language.
  
  

What do we offer?

At Nearfield Instruments, you will join a company at a unique stage of growth. We are scaling globally while continuing to develop technology that pushes the boundaries of semiconductor metrology.

We offer:

• The opportunity to build and shape Nearfield’s global technical training organization.

• A highly visible leadership role with direct impact on technical capability, service excellence, and customer success.

• The chance to work with advanced metrology technology used by leading semiconductor manufacturers.

• A fast-paced scale-up environment where your ideas, decisions, and contributions have a tangible impact.

• Significant ownership and the freedom to define the Academy’s strategy, learning model, and long-term development.

• The opportunity to accelerate the development of engineers across our global organization.

• Close collaboration with experts and senior leaders across Engineering, Service, Applications, Product Management, Manufacturing, and Customer Support.

• The ability to influence how new technologies are introduced, learned, and supported worldwide.

• An international and ambitious team united by a shared interest in innovation and technology.

• Excellent opportunities for personal and professional growth as the company continues to scale.

• A competitive salary aligned with your experience and expertise.

• A one-year contract with the intention of permanent employment.

• A strong pension scheme and commuting allowance.

• 30 vacation days based on a full-time contract.

• 8% holiday allowance.

• Flexibility to exchange public holidays for days that are meaningful to you.

• A structured onboarding programme.
  
  

Interested?

Do you want to build a global technical academy that enables engineers to master some of the most advanced technology in the semiconductor industry? Apply now and help shape technical excellence at Nearfield Instruments.