In graduate school, I worked at Intel on the Assembly Test Technology Development team. I worked on a metrology tool issue that I was lucky enough to own (with help, of course). I started in a lab doing sensor characterization on a C++ platform, used Octave to develop metrology algorithms from the sensor data, and helped to transfer the solutions to the tool supplier. After I left, the process I created was officially rolled out to Intel's high-volume manufacturing line.
It was an amazing time despite working in Arizona over the summer (seriously hot). I really felt like I had enough ownership to work on the project in my own way, while having lots of support from the surrounding team.
This isn't a real picture of the machine of course. But it shows a general idea of how metrology is used and has some similarities (and a lot of differences) to the machine I worked on. Source: https://metrology.news/laser-profile-scanners-cutting-edge-performance-improves-production-quality-and-performance/