Chip design house Coasia to hire over a hundred engineers 

South Korean semiconductor design house Coasia is planning to hire over a hundred engineers this year.

Company executive Seol Byung-chan told TheElec that it has adopted a new employee education program called Global Design Education Centre.

The program pays an employee for a year but instead of being put into the job right away, they are taught classes on semiconductor design.

The curriculum includes all processes of design from front-end to back-end.

Coasia said it has 70 engineers go through the program for the first time last year and 60 of them completed the curriculum and have been put to work.

It is aiming to have a minimum of a hundred engineers go through the program this time around.

The number is unusually high as Coasia currently employs around 400 engineers.

Seol said while the program is costly for the company the reception to the program has been mostly positive.

There is currently a talent shortage in the South Korean chip sector and Coasia’s program is aimed at overcoming that issue.

Design houses act as middlemen between fabless chip designers and chip manufacturing foundries.

They have no fab and are completely comprised of engineers that have to rework the design blueprint given by chip designers for production.

TSMC’s design house Global Unichip spend 82% of its $2.6 billion Taiwanese dollar cost during the first half of the year on personnel.

This ratio is lower for design house partners of Samsung which has increased calls for South Korean companies to spend more on talent.