Most Semiconductor Jobs Are Not Chip Design Jobs
We track hiring across 185 semiconductor companies worldwide. For this analysis, we examined 160 companies whose job postings were verified within a 24-hour window.
Those companies listed 32,507 open positions, of which 26,195 were engineering roles.
The single largest category is equipment engineering, with 4,096 openings across 79 companies. When combined with the 2,211 manufacturing and industrial engineering roles, it becomes clear that the industry requires far more engineers to build and support fabs than many candidates realize.
The Largest Engineering Categories
Openings across the major disciplines break down as follows:
- Equipment Engineering: 4,096 openings
- Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering: 2,211 openings
- Applications and Field Applications (FAE): 1,372 openings
- Design Verification (DV): 1,199 openings
- Infrastructure and Embedded Software: 1,149 openings
- Process Engineering: 1,122 openings
- Hardware Systems: 1,097 openings
For comparison, analog and mixed-signal circuit design roles accounted for 1,171 open positions, representing approximately 4% of all tracked jobs.
These Jobs Stay Open for a Long Time
Half of all engineering openings had been posted for more than 58 days. More than a third had been open for over 90 days, and 8% had been open for over six months. Only 29% were posted within the last month.
The slowest-filling categories include EDA and CAD, semiconductor firmware, memory design, and process engineering, where median posting age ranges from 70 to 86 days.
Infrastructure software positions move fastest at a median of 35 days, followed by systems software at 36 days, hardware systems at 42 days, and equipment engineering at 45 days.
A Fresh Posting Date Does Not Always Mean a Fresh Job
More than 3,200 engineering openings (12% of the total) had their posting dates refreshed at least once by employer ATS systems. A reposted job has been open for a median of 127 days, compared with 50 days for an unrefreshed posting.
Duplicate listings are also common: approximately 8,136 postings (31%) share an exact title with another opening at the same employer, with roughly 5,100 representing identical roles listed across multiple geographic locations.
Seniority Distribution: Not an Entry-Level Market
Senior, Staff, and Principal roles represent 47% of active openings. Mid-level positions account for 25%, while entry-level and internship positions combined represent just 8% of the total engineering inventory.
Where the Openings Are and What They Pay
- Top Geographic Hubs: United States (9,615), India (3,053), Singapore (1,736), Taiwan (1,688), and Malaysia (1,137).
- Employers with the Most Postings: Micron (2,242), Qualcomm (1,751), NVIDIA (1,562), Applied Materials (1,440), and Lam Research (981).
- US Compensation: Across 4,574 postings with disclosed salary ranges, the median midpoint is $175,000.
- Work Arrangements: Among postings specifying a policy, 68% are onsite, 28% are hybrid, and only 4% are remote.
We track verified job openings across the semiconductor supply chain. Explore openings by category on SemiconductorJobs.com or upload your resume for confidential matching against open positions.