Cohu, Inc.

Cohu, Inc. designs and builds the automated equipment that sits at the back end of the semiconductor manufacturing line - test handlers, contactors, and inspection systems. These machines physically move devices under test (DUTs), establish reliable electrical contact at high pin counts, and verify that chips meet specifications before they ship. The work spans tight mechanical tolerances, thermal management, and real-time motion control, all of which need to run reliably at production throughput for thousands of hours.

On the software side, development is largely in C and C++, targeting embedded controllers that orchestrate handler motion sequences, manage test cell integration with ATE (automatic test equipment), and drive inspection algorithms. Engineers work closely with hardware on a daily basis - debugging often means being at the machine, tracing signal integrity issues, or tuning servo loops. The company has been operating since 1947 and is publicly traded on NASDAQ under the ticker COHU, with roughly 3,000 employees and facilities worldwide.

Cohu's engineering challenges are rooted in the physical constraints of high-volume semiconductor test: maintaining contact reliability across millions of insertions, handling increasingly small and delicate packages, and keeping cycle times low enough to stay cost-effective. The company's culture reflects that operational reality - hands-on, hardware-adjacent, and focused on the incremental improvements that keep yield and uptime where they need to be on the factory floor.