X-ray absorption fine structures (XAFS) investigations of platinum silicide and nickel silicide thin films using synchrotron light sources are reported. These films were prepared with ion sputtering of metal on a clean Si(100) wafer, followed by rapid thermal annealing. XAFS at the Ni K-edge, Pt L-3,L-2 and M-3,M-2-edges and Si K, L-3,L-2-edge have been used to obtain information about the structure and bonding systematics of these systems, It is shown that single phase PtSi film is formed after annealing under modest conditions while Ni-Si films undergo several phase transformations from Ni-rich silicide to NiSi and ultimately NiSi2 as annealing temperature increases. It is also shown that Si L-3,L-2-edge studies using total electron yield and fluorescence yield are ideally suited for non-invasive characterization pf silicide thin films, since there exists a large chemical shift in threshold energy (similar to 4 eV) between the silicide and silicon oxide. The relevance of this information to the refinement of the salicidation process is noted.