Executive Assistant

Applied Materials is seeking a dynamic, hands-on Executive Assistant to support the Chief of Staff of the President of the Semiconductor Products Group (SPG). You will drive the success of the business by handling the day-to-day activities and providing a range of complex administrative support services in a proactive and detail-oriented manner. Success in this role will require effective communication and a trusted relationship between the Executive Assistant, Chief of Staff and President, and the need to respect confidentiality. This person will work on-site from our Santa Clara, CA headquarters Monday – Friday (with flexibility when needed).

The ideal candidate is a smart, proactive, self-starter with a roll-up-your-sleeves attitude. To be successful, you thrive in fast-paced environments and respond to requests with urgency and enthusiasm. You must have the ability to exercise good judgement in a variety of situations, possess strong written and verbal communication skills and excellent organization skills.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage, educate, and advocate on behalf of the Chief of Staff through strategic time management, streamlined communications, and action accountability to ensure the highest functioning team dynamics for securing company success.
• Provide non-routine project-based and administrative support to the Chief of Staff, handling a high volume of competing requests (via multiple clients) that require professional discernment on appropriate urgency/prioritization to complete.
• Provide extensive calendar support requiring prioritization of multiple calendars with effective communication across various internal and external stakeholders.
• Coordinate, schedule and manage travel, meetings, seminars series, speaking engagements and conferences for the President of SPG globally with follow up processing of detail-oriented expense reports.
• Prepare and process departmental paperwork, including non-routine correspondence, complex presentations, contracts, and detailed reports.
• Independent management of the budgeting and contracting processes within scope of role assignment.
• Independent coordination of multiple on-going conferences and off-site meetings/events (e.g. leadership meetings, executive strategy offsites, etc.)
• Support the Chief of Staff in planning, tracking, and executing key strategic initiatives, ensuring timelines, deliverables, and milestones are met.
• Develop and maintain project trackers, dashboards, and communication plans for cross-functional workstreams.
• Coordinate across multiple functional groups to collect information, consolidate updates, and ensure alignment on executive-level projects.
• Drive follow-through on action items, ensuring owners have clarity on next steps and deadlines
• Assist with process mapping and workflow optimization projects, helping identify bottlenecks and proposing improvements.
• Manage small to medium-scale operational projects independently, from scoping through completion (e.g., executive programs, internal process redesign, org-wide communication efforts).
• Prepare project briefs, summaries, and readouts for leadership consumption, ensuring complex information is synthesized clearly.
• Serve as a central point of coordination between the Chief of Staff, technical leaders, and partner organizations for ongoing initiatives

Skills, Knowledge, Experience & Education
At Applied Materials, Material Innovation reshapes industries and lives through innovative materials science and engineering solutions.
The ideal candidate will have the following:

• Polished, professional and service-oriented demeanor balanced with a directive confidence that assists in moving tasks/projects towards completion.
• Sophisticated communication skills, verbal and written with an understanding/integration of audience and industry specific nuances.
• Comfort functioning in a role that requires a high degree of flexibility with the ability to independently interpret policies and solve non-routine, complex issues in an autonomous manner
• Demonstrates understanding of how various functional groups and/or strategic leaders in the company interrelate
• Flexibility to take on a wide range of responsibilities to support the Chief of Staff with ability to establish workflow and project priority
• Aptitude for working in collaborative team environments integrated with a “leadership lens” of maturity, proactive communication, relationship building skills and resiliency.
• Ability to manage multiple, concurrent tasks and/or projects with the highest levels of professionalism, confidentiality, timely turn-around and client service.
• Solutions-oriented approach to departmental/company challenges with the ability to identify/analyze scope of challenge, determine approach, compile data and prepare reports and positive-change recommendations.
• Display of professional passion, collaborative leadership and continuous learning approach to management of administrative staff. Ability to clearly communicate, strategically align and strongly advocate on behalf of the administrative function.
• Advanced working knowledge of MS Office Suite
• Comfort with use and integration of mobile and social media technology platforms
• Comfort in learning new technologies as to become proficient in desktop systems/internal software necessary to successfully perform assigned tasks and increase efficiency.
• Demonstrates understanding of company policies and procedures and their application/impact on company operations and success.
• Displays a working knowledge of the company’s product/service + mission critical goals and assists with the implementation of systems/processes that the company needs to operate effectively and achieve optimal success.

We are a catalyst to unlock the power of our customers’ ideas and are committed to overcoming challenges that seem insurmountable.
To succeed in this role requires a capacity for complexity and temperament that includes:

• A very mature individual with the right balance of confidence and humility.
• Exceptional ability to absorb and handle stress.
• Process oriented while also strongly developing and relying on interpersonal relationships across the company
• Ability to connect equally well upwards, downwards and sideways in the organization
• Self-motivated and driven towards excellence
• A high level of EQ to be able to manage across a large team with significant diversity
• Analyzing, processing and decision-making based on multidisciplinary and multi-functional data sources that could frequently be incomplete.
• Ability to distinguish between and prioritizing urgent and important issues
• Situational awareness and complex decision-making ability appropriate for the situation