
Nearfield Instruments brings together the most creative minds in science and technology to develop, produce and market revolutionary high throughput scanning probe microscopy systems, enabling atom-scale resolution 3D metrology at industry-level throughput. We design, develop, integrate, market and service these advanced metrology machines, which enable our customers – the world’s leading chipmakers – to increase the production yields, and thus, functionality of their microchips. In this way Nearfield Instruments contributes to the development of smaller, more powerful consumer electronics.

Nearfield Instruments brings together the most creative minds in science and technology to develop, produce and market revolutionary high throughput scanning probe microscopy systems, enabling atom-scale resolution 3D metrology at industry-level throughput. We design, develop, integrate, market and service these advanced metrology machines, which enable our customers – the world’s leading chipmakers – to increase the production yields, and thus, functionality of their microchips. In this way Nearfield Instruments contributes to the development of smaller, more powerful consumer electronics.
Founded: January 2016 as a TNO spin-off (Delft, Netherlands)
Flagship product: QUADRA — in-line, high-throughput 3D scanning-probe/AFM metrology at atomic-scale resolution
Latest major funding: €135 million Series C closed 2024-07-18 (led by Walden Catalyst and Temasek)
Investor base: Backed by strategic and institutional investors including Temasek, Walden Catalyst, M&G Investments, Invest-NL, Innovation Industries, ING, Samsung Venture, Eugene, and TNO
Market focus: Semiconductor process-control metrology for advanced chipmakers
| Company |
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Semiconductor process-control metrology; in-line atomic-scale 3D metrology for advanced semiconductor manufacturing.
2016
Semiconductor Manufacturing
€135 million
Co-investor M&G Investments (Catalyst strategy); participation from Innovation Industries, Invest-NL, and ING.
€27 million
Existing investors Invest-NL, Innovation Industries and TNO participated.
€17.5 million
Announced as part of Series B financing.
€12 million
Additional equity investment that brought the Series B round total to €48.5 million.
€10 million
Early investment; TNO remained a shareholder.
Flexible bank financing facility to accelerate global expansion and scale production capacity.
“Backed by a mix of strategic, institutional and deep-tech investors, including Temasek, Walden Catalyst, M&G Investments, Invest-NL, Innovation Industries, ING, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, Eugene Investment & Securities, and TNO.”
At Nearfield Instruments we're looking for a PLC Software Engineer to join our team.
About Nearfield Instruments Nearfield Instruments (NFI) is a fast-growing scale-up high-tech company. We design, develop, integrate, market and service advanced metrology machines. Our machines enables our customers - the world’s leading chipmakers – to increase the production yields, and thus, functionality of their microchips, which in turn leads to smaller, more powerful consumer electronics.
Founded in 2016, we bring together the most creative minds (approx. 320 employees) in science and technology and develop a one-of-a-kind, revolutionary high throughput Scanning Probe Microscopy system.
What will you be doing?
As PLC Software Engineer you develop, test, integrate and qualify the entire software stack of our machine. From low level embedded control to high level user interface and communication with the factory. You will help in designing, developing and maintaining functionality of the PLC layer. Our PLC stack is based on an EtherCat network controlled by a Beckhoff master PLC.
Besides this you will be responsible for, but not limited to:
Why is the position interesting for you?
Where you will be working?
Within our Design & Engineering department this role is part of the Software Group. This SW Group consists of 5 teams (Architectural, Machine Control, Device Control, Data Science, Integration & Support).
Your focus will be the Device Control where you help developing control algorithms and support in PLC choices.
What are we looking for?
Apply for the job If the above challenges excites you, we encourage you to send us your details using the Apply now button on our career site.
Our recruitment process:
Recruitment, consultancy and/or other agency? We appreciate the interest, but we source all our candidates directly. We understand that you as an intermediary want to present candidates to our interesting positions. This is not how we have structured our recruitment.
This means that all profiles offered to Nearfield Instruments will be treated as direct applications. Unless we have explicitly agreed otherwise.