For Wayne Yang, general manager of emerging chip-materials maker IV Technologies, the biggest challenge is not finding new business—demand is unprecedented—but finding enough engineers and technicians to keep pace with the company’s rapid expansion.
Yang told Nikkei Asia: “We are currently expanding a new plant in central Taiwan and actively hiring to support that growth. However, we find that our customers, peers, and supply-chain partners are all hiring aggressively as well.”
He added: “I’m willing to try every channel, and I’ve even asked former university classmates whether any of their juniors might be interested. But one of them told me: ‘Sorry, brother—basically every living engineer has already been snapped up by the big companies.’”
Yang’s company operates in a niche—producing high-quality chemical-mechanical polishing pads used in chip manufacturing and advanced packaging—but its hiring difficulties are far from unique.
The global boom in AI infrastructure is sharply lifting demand for everything from memory chips and printed circuit boards to lasers and assembly services. Chipmakers and suppliers across Asia are launching their largest-ever expansion plans to meet that demand. Those plans require hundreds or thousands of additional workers.