India is betting big on the semiconductor industry to drive an important phase of its manufacturing leap and the focus is expected to create over one lakh jobs in the coming years.Industry experts estimate over 1 lakh jobs in the next three years through the country’s efforts to build a semiconductor ecosystem of its own.Hiring requirements in the semiconductor industry are also evolving, with recruitment extending beyond conventional chip-design roles.
Talent hunt in semiconductor industry
According to estimates by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the country’s semiconductor workforce, currently pegged at 25,000, is expected to expand fourfold during this period.Separately, a study by recruitment and staffing firm CIEL HR Services for ET indicates that companies in the sector could add around 67,500 jobs in the next 18 months.Professionals with specialised skills, including process engineering, chip fabrication, chip design, systems engineering and product architecture, can earn four to six times the salaries of IT services professionals with similar experience. The difference is particularly pronounced at the mid-to-senior levels, Ankush Wadhera, partner and managing director at BCG told the financial daily.“The supply of fit-for-role talent is not keeping pace with demand and, as a result, many players are looking outside India for senior talent,” said Wadhera.The US and Southeast Asia have emerged as key destinations for companies seeking experienced professionals, with a significant share of the global talent pool comprising members of the Indian diaspora.“Entry-level and mid-level talent can be easily trained, but it is senior talent that is in acute shortage in the country,” he said.
Specialists in focus
Companies are increasingly looking for specialists in process engineering, equipment maintenance, yield management, reliability engineering and advanced packaging, areas that involve high-value technical work.A CIEL HR Services study estimates that India has around 1.5 lakh semiconductor professionals working across chip design, verification, engineering, testing and product development.“About 43% of the workforce has more than 10 years of experience, while nearly three-fourths have over five years of experience,” said Aditya Narayan Mishra, CEO of CIEL HR Services.A study of India’s semiconductor industry, found that Qualcomm has the highest number of current job openings in the sector. AMD ranks second, followed by Nvidia, Synopsys, Applied Materials, Infineon, Cadence and Micron.“For years, India’s semiconductor workforce was almost entirely focused on design,” said Mishra. “Domestic fabrication and packaging units are now creating demand for roles in process engineering, equipment maintenance, yield management, reliability and advanced packaging, which until recently accounted for a negligible share of hiring.”The shortage of skilled professionals remains acute. The study found that for every 100 engineers with expertise in microarchitecture, the semiconductor industry has 135 vacancies to fill.Companies are looking beyond competitors in the semiconductor industry to meet their hiring requirements, increasingly tapping academic institutions and IT services firms for talent. Among the skills in greatest demand are physical design and timing closure, digital design and RTL (register transfer level) coding, and design verification.Employers are also seeking professionals skilled in microarchitecture, emulation, formal verification, embedded systems and silicon bring-up. Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, C++, Verilog and SystemVerilog, which is used for hardware description and verification, is another sought-after skill.For its analysis, CIEL examined semiconductor recruitment trends in India over the 12 months leading up to November 2026. The study covered approximately 45,000 job openings across more than 150 semiconductor companies.
