Singapore makes one in 10 of the world’s chips. Talent depth is another question

Singapore’s place in the global semiconductor industry is not in doubt. The country produces one in 10 of the world’s chips, according to the Singapore Economic Development Board, and has grown from a manufacturing base into a hub spanning chip design, wafer fabrication, advanced packaging, and testing.

Andrew Goh, General Manager, South-East Asia and Corporate Vice-President at Lam Research, sees a qualification in that record. Much of the growth has been driven by manufacturing expansion and production-related activity, he says, while a significant share of leading-edge semiconductor R&D has stayed concentrated in larger technology hubs elsewhere. As the industry moves further into AI, high-bandwidth memory, advanced packaging, silicon photonics and AI-enabled manufacturing, that distinction starts to matter.

“The challenge is no longer simply growing the workforce, but developing the depth and breadth of expertise needed to support these increasingly complex technologies,” he tells HRM Asia.

Lam Research announced in August that it plans to hire approximately 200 people in Singapore this year, with nearly 90% of the positions in specialised engineering and technical roles. The work reaches into high-bandwidth memory, 2.5D and 3D integration, silicon photonics and co-packaged optics, panel-level packaging, and tool and service intelligence technologies – the kind of narrow specialisations that barely registered as job categories a decade ago.

That narrowing has consequences for how employers hire. Goh’s position is that the industry cannot reasonably expect candidates to arrive with extensive experience in fields that are only a few years old.

“Because technology is evolving so quickly, it is not always realistic to expect talent to have years of experience in every emerging field,” he says. “That is why we focus not only on technical expertise, but also on strong fundamentals in engineering and science, along with problem-solving ability, intellectual curiosity, and learning agility.”

The more consequential shift, he suggests, is one of timing. Employers accustomed to opening a search when a position becomes vacant will find little to wait for.

“One of the biggest shifts has been recognising that talent development cannot begin only when a specialised role becomes vacant,” Goh says. “If we wait until expertise in an emerging technology is required, the available talent pool is often very limited.”

Lam’s response has been to build several entry points at once: university partnerships, internships, training programmes, and internal opportunities for employees to develop skills in adjacent disciplines. Goh highlights work that gives students hands-on exposure to semiconductor process integration and advanced device development through industry-relevant simulation and learning environments, which he describes as bridging academic learning and manufacturing reality.

Redistribution, or expansion

Every employer in a tight market says something similar about investing in the talent pipeline, and Goh acknowledges the gap between that language and the reality of competition for talent. Experienced semiconductor engineers will always be sought after, and some movement between organisations is normal. What concerns him is when that becomes the whole strategy.

“If the industry focuses solely on competing for the same pool of experienced professionals, we are simply redistributing talent rather than expanding it,” he says.

Expanding it, in his view, means two things running in parallel: bringing new people in, and helping engineers already in the industry move into emerging areas. He points to process engineering, materials science, equipment engineering and data science as foundations that can carry someone into unfamiliar technical territory, provided the training and exposure are there.

What holds its value

AI is driving demand for those roles while changing the engineering work itself, and it is not obvious which capabilities will still be worth hiring for in five years.

Goh’s answer draws on his own start in the industry. Early in his engineering career, he spent days working through a yield issue with little more than observation, experimentation and input from other teams. No tool resolved it.

“It was the discipline of asking the right questions, testing assumptions, and understanding the underlying physics,” he says. “That experience taught me an important lesson: while technology evolves, sound engineering judgement endures.”

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He expects AI to sharpen engineers’ ability to analyse large datasets, spot patterns, simulate scenarios and reach decisions faster, without displacing the need to interpret what comes back and work out what it means for quality, yield and performance. First-principles thinking, critical problem-solving, systems thinking and cross-disciplinary collaboration will hold their value, he says, and he would now add the ability to work with AI and data to that list. Skills tightly bound to a particular tool, workflow, or established process are the ones he expects to date.

For engineers entering the field, that shapes the advice he would give.

“Focus less on predicting which technology will dominate five years from now and more on building the ability to learn continuously,” he says. “The semiconductor industry has reinvented itself many times, and those with strong foundations, intellectual curiosity, and adaptability will be best positioned to thrive regardless of how the technology landscape changes.”

His own path suggests why. When Goh started out, the expectation was that an engineer would build expertise in one technical domain and follow a fairly linear route through it. Working across technologies, customers, functions and geographies changed that, and moving into business leadership taught him that adaptability, collaboration and communication now sit close to technical knowledge in importance.

It also shapes what he thinks Singapore needs. Producing more semiconductor graduates, on its own, will not close the gap. What would help is more opportunity to build specialised expertise through hands-on work, and an easier path for engineers already in the industry to reskill as the technology moves – which he links to sustained R&D investment, closer collaboration between industry and universities, and career-long routes into deeper specialisation.

“Talent depth is not measured solely by workforce size,” Goh concludes. “The organisations and countries that succeed will be those that create environments where engineers can continuously evolve alongside the industry, contributing not only to manufacturing advanced technologies, but also to developing the next generation of them.”