South Korean fabless firms facing difficulty hiring engineers 

South Korean fabless companies are facing difficulty hiring design engineers.

Most engineers with a Master’s degree or higher are going to large conglomerates, TheElec has learned.

Those with over 10 years of experience are mostly absorbed by Samsung Electronics, people familiar with the matter said.

Some of the engineers form corporations and are hired in groups by large conglomerates, they said.

Engineers with over 10 years of experience usually gets an annual salary between 230 million won to 250 million, they added.

Another group of people, who work in local fabless companies, said they have been suffering from a shortage of talents recently.

Samsung is expanding its foundry business and is hiring IP design engineers en masse.

The company’s chip business, called Device Solutions by the firm, had 55,000 employees at the end of 2019 but this has increased to 60,000 as of the first half of this year.

SK Hynix was also looking for new talents that can design system semiconductors such as image sensors besides its main memory business.

Both memory giants are expected to hire more employees in relevant fields during the second half of this year.

The situation has caused local fabless companies to hire those from Taiwan or Vietnam.

Some of the companies are acquiring local companies there to absorb the engineers into their roster.

ADTechnology, since last year, had hired 450 additional semiconductor designers by acquiring three companies since last year.

Coasia has also hired Nexel recently, and is operating design centers in China, Taiwan and Vietnam to hire tatents there.