So shes an orc artificer, level one so still learning her craft, and I just want my party to remember her because she’s important for my bbeg’s big plan. how do I make her more dynamic than “not great at her job, but trying her best”? She’s got a decent backstory about how a group of dark elves massacred her village, but it feels like she’s missing something. DMs, help!!!!

Is she an apprentice? What’s her workshop like? A good way to have to characters interact with important npcs is to have one or more pcs recognize them. How does she fit into the BBEG’s plan, out of curiosity?

First up: the players are not going to reliably remember your NPCs unless they have significant interactions with them. Why will they need to interact with this character, preferably multiple times?

(Also, of course, when they do latch on to an NPC, it's usually the one-off color NPC you tossed in to the description, and not the important one.)

Next: Backstory doesn't matter. It doesn't come up. What's this character like? What's their personality? How do they speak? What do they want?

I find the NPCs my players best remember are the one I give a big personality. Not necessarily loud, though it helps, but something memorable. For example, I usually don’t do accents, so on the rare occasion I do, they really pop and people remember them. Or give them an unusually in-depth description of their appearance, physically, and also what color clothes they wear, etc.
Players will remember personalities much more than anything else.

Also, I stay away from genetic fantasy names, you know, the elf named oaklover; the dwarf named rumblerock; random and unnecessary apostrophes. More earth like names can stick better. I have a DM who finds food-related names stick in people’s heads. I’ve had the same experience, also earth cities work well for me, people will remember tiramisu and Tijuana.

As jl said the characters your players remember a d love are rarely the ones you want them to, it’s the one dimensional character you put no thought into but which has a quirk. In one of my games all my players love and keep going back to one of the characters father’s not because I put a lot of thought into him but because I decided on the spur of the moment that he always called the incredibly goth player character who was his daughter “muffin” 

So what am I trying to say? Don’t worry about the backstory, and frankly “goblins killed my entire family” describes about one in three NPCs, instead focus on the quirks. If she’s just starting out as an artificer make her clumsy or have things randomly explode in the background. Make her loveable and your players will want to talk to her

Another thought: If you want them to remember the NPC, have them have to protect them for a while. For whatever reason, the NPC needs to travel with them for their own safety, and also they're not a nuisance. Even if they don't fight, they are useful to have around in some manner. They still need a personality, but the extended exposure and the PCs being responsible for them will help to create a connection. 

It's not guaranteed to work -- nothing is, especially if the players feel like you're trying to make them like an NPC that they don't.

If you really want to focus on the backstory, you could, at some point, have a group of drow attack the party and her, after which she tells them what happened in her backstory. You should probably just stick with her being lovable and clumsy if you really want the party to interact with her, though.