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Tech Update
OPPORTUNITIES IN THE SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY

Creativity & focus keep semi engineers on top

"We've gone from the toughest time in the industry to stronger movements," says an industry watcher

By Claire Swedberg
Contributing Editor

After two bitter years, the semiconductor industry is making a slow but steady upswing. Major players are hiring more engineers now than they have for nearly three years, and the future looks hopeful.

A bunny-suited worker on the job in AMD's Fab 25 in Austin, TX, which turns out flash memory devices.

The fact is that semiconductors are everywhere. Even when the computer industry is in a slump, semiconductors are in demand for today's avionics and weapons systems, along with cell phones, anti-lock braking systems and top-line versions of household items like dishwashers, washers and dryers, even irons.

Kate Klemas is a spokesperson for Rodel (Newark, DE), a manufacturer of chemicals used to polish semiconductor chips. She thinks that new growth has finally begun. "We've gone from the toughest time in the industry to stronger movement," she says.

Robin McCasland, director of workforce strategy at the Semiconductor Industry Association (www.semichips.org), points out that there's still a serious shortage of engineers. "We're going to need thousands of engineers that we don't have" to meet long-term requirements in the industry, she says.

Targeted hiring
The approach to hiring semiconductor engineers has changed over recent years. McCasland believes that recruiters are targeting engineers with a specific focus rather than general experience. Because of the demand for individualized skills, she sees more hiring of people with at least a few years of work experience.

Many companies are attempting to increase their numbers of women and underrepresented minorities. McCasland says she's heard from a number of employers seeking diversity. "We have to do what we can to build up the pipeline into the job market," she says.

A close-up view of the Opteron processor; a leader in AMD's array of microprocessors and other complex semiconductors.

Skill search at AMD
AMD (Austin, TX) makes microprocessors and other complex semiconductors. Dee Lane of AMD human resources explains that the skills the company needs fit into very specific areas.

"For manufacturing engineers at our wafer fabs, we tend to hire folks with solid state physics, microelectronics, ChE and chemistry degrees," she notes. Also helpful is previous manufacturing engineering experience in the semi industry.

On the other hand, an opening in a microprocessor design or test development group would preferably be filled by someone who already has microprocessor design experience. An engineer who has designed memory devices might be considered, but the candidate with microprocessor experience would have the edge, she confides.

Product marketing engineers for the microprocessor marketing team take a different turn. "We look for folks who have worked for technology companies in the server/workstation or the desktop solutions business and have experience in this type of hardware environment," Lane says.

Lam Research seeks creativity plus specific skills
Finding the right engineers is the mission of Ray Carrillo of Lam Research Corp (Fremont, CA), which makes semiconductor processing equipment. Carrillo is human resources director of global organizational development and employment services. He notes that Lam Research needs a multitude of very specific skills and backgrounds, and many employees there have, or go on to, advanced degrees.

To ensure a pool of likely candidates, the company has established relationships with universities, working with professors and students.

Lam Research candidates, says Carrillo, may have a degree in plasma physics or ChE, and preferably some experience in a related field. Production process engineers, EEs and MEs are also wanted. Engineers with some business or marketing background are also welcome.

It's a real plus if they can demonstrate creativity and innovation. At Lam Research, Carrillo points out, "We're looking for solutions to problems that haven't even been identified yet."

Jackie Seto, Lam Research managing director: "You can learn from everyone."

Jackie Seto is a managing director at Lam Research
Combining engineering and marketing is an increasingly valuable career approach. At Lam Research, managing director Jackie Seto has done just that.

Seto grew up in upstate New York, but headed to McGill University (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) because of its well-known engineering program. While Seto was earning her 1987 BSChE, she worked summers at IBM (Fishkill, NY) as a process technician in semiconductors. "That summer work was the beginning of my career," she says. "It gave me the experience I needed."

Her first jobs after college were in Silicon Valley. First she worked as a process engineer in lithography at a semiconductor manufacturer, then moved to the equipment side, working as an applications engineer for Ultra-tech Stepper (UTS), a manufacturer of lithography equipment. It was at UTS that she first explored marketing.

When Lam Research brought her on in 1994, she went directly into product management in dielectric etching. Her job was to work with other engineers to define projects and product features, and to prioritize the work to ensure timely release. She interfaced with marketing, production and sales.

In a 2000 reorganization, Seto became senior director of marketing for North America and Europe. In 2001 Lam Research put its Asian marketing team under the same umbrella, and promoted Seto to managing director, in charge of about thirty people, many of them engineers.

"To do product marketing you need to be very technical," she explains. "But you still need to be a marketer first and an engineer second. You have to be able to think on your feet and express yourself clearly and concisely."

In June 2002 Seto went on maternity leave. She returned in September to the post of managing director of Lam's chemical/mechanical planarization organization. Now she spends her time on strategic business management, defining new revenue streams.

For Seto, process engineering is great, marketing even better, and the opportunity to stretch all her skills is the best. Her advice: "Stay focused on your objectives, learn from your mistakes, and remember that you can listen to and learn from everyone around you."

Maria Guadalupe Ukanwa of MIPS: your engineering work speaks for itself.

Maria Guadalupe Ukanwa: circuit design at MIPS Technologies
Maria Guadalupe Ukanwa is an engineer with highly focused skills. Hers are in circuit design, as a staff engineer and team leader at MIPS Technologies (Mt View, CA). She's been involved in about five new MIPS products in her career so far.

Ukanwa attended Stanford University, getting her BSEE in 1994 and her MSEE two years later. She's a member of both the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and the Society of Women Engineers.

She began her career at Silicon Graphics in the MIPS division, which is now MIPS Technologies. She was hired as a circuit design engineer, and her first job was to take logic equations from the design engineers and turn them into transistors and gates. Then she and her team verified the designs and analyzed their timing to be sure components were running at the proper speed. That phase can require "a lot of tweaking," Ukanwa says.

Once properly tweaked, the chips are sent to a fab where programs written by Ukanwa's team are used to test their functionality. Should there be a failure, the team is ready to step in with further assistance.

At MIPS, projects are a matter of teamwork. Sometimes thirty people get involved on a project, including circuit engineers, logic designers, people in the cache group, design verification engineers and, of course, managers.

Ukanwa still works in circuit design, but now she's at the highest level of her group. "The good thing about engineering is that your work speaks for itself," she says with a smile.

She finds that interpersonal skills are important for engineers. "I always have to be able to work with the team," she explains. "I can't continue until someone else gives me the data I need."

Her colleagues, she says, are "hard workers and good problem-solvers, easy-going and open minded" - and with good listening skills.

While focused skills are essential, so is flexibility. "We have new college grads here who've been given a great deal of responsibility. You can get a lot of experience here, where at a larger company you might be pegged into one task and skill set."

Maria Anderson, AMI Semi etch process engineer, goes hiking at the Grand Canyon.

Maria Anderson: etch process at AMI Semi
Maria Anderson lives in Idaho now, but she's working, by distance learning, on an MSChE from Arizona State University.

She grew up in Phoenix, AZ, and completed her BSChE at Arizona State University in 1996. After graduation she moved to a full-time position at ST Microelectronics (Phoenix, AZ), the same company where she'd been interning. She began as a photolithography process engineer, supporting eight-inch wafer lines and bringing up new tools.

Five years later she joined AMI Semiconductor (Pocatello, ID) as an etch process engineer. She's now associated with lines for five-inch wafers, working with photolithography, thin-film and diffusion engineers.

In AMI's 24-7 manufacturing environment, Anderson needs to be on call almost constantly in case of a problem. If there's any change in the photo or etching process, "Everyone is impacted," she says.

Anderson likes the small-city environment of Pocatello, where employees at AMI have a good relationship both on the job and outside of it. "I don't have a problem going to talk with people in marketing," she says. "Chances are I played tennis with them last night."

Rodel's Nichole Bishop: slurries for the chipmakers
Nichole Bishop's career so far has all been in ChE. As a product engineer in Rodel's slurry tech services group, she's helping to develop and produce optimum slurries for the company's chip manufacturer customers.

Bishop began with a 1997 BSChE from the University of Delaware. She went to work for Procter and Gamble (Baltimore, MD) as a process engineer making pigment slurries for cosmetics.

In 2000 she joined Rodel to work on slurries for chip polishing. After a year she was promoted to supervisor in a different area, and now she's back in slurries as a product engineer.

The polishing slurries Bishop's group develops may involve chemicals, or simply water and abrasive. At any given time she may be working on one large project or several small ones, interacting with the tech services group, other product engineers, apps engineers and technicians.

When she was a process engineer, she explains, her main focus was improving the quality, safety and cost of production. As a product engineer she has two sets of responsibilities. Her immediate goal is to improve product performance based on specific customer requests. Beyond that, she works to expand slurry research, to be sure the company can provide for its customers' current and future needs.

Bishop also helps the company as a member of a recruiting team at U Delaware, looking for good ChE and ME candidates. She always tries to find people who can work well with others. "In order to get the job done you need to utilize cooperative skills," she declares.

Tom Chang of Credence. His group is a bridge between software and hardware.

Tom Chang: test system performance at Credence
There are many routes to the right job, and Credence system performance engineer Tom Chang has tried several. He began with a 1999 BSME and 2000 MSME from the University of California-Berkeley. Then he joined chip-maker Atmel (San Jose, CA) as a product test engineer.

Two years later he took a job with Credence (Hillsboro, OR), which makes automatic test equipment for semiconductor manufacturers. But the work wasn't in testing; it was in technical recruiting. "We were looking for people with engineering backgrounds to screen technicians," explains human resources specialist Emily Seltzer.

Last year Chang moved into his current job as a system performance engineer. His group, he explains, acts as a bridge between the software and hardware engineers, writing diagnostics software for semiconductor test equipment.

Chang's family came to the U.S. from Taiwan when he was six. He lived in southern California, then moved north to the Bay Area for college.

His degree in ME, coupled with his interest in EE and software, have helped him on the job. Because his group is involved in both software and hardware, they need a solid understanding of both.

Chang appreciates the environment at Credence, which has allowed him to test his skills in new assignments in the exciting semiconductor industry.

D/C

Claire Swedberg is a freelance writer who lives in La Conner, WA.