Helping a Global Semiconductor Company Establish Its India Design Centre

Client Overview

In 2025, a global semiconductor company initiated the establishment of its India Design Centre as part of its global expansion strategy. The centre was envisioned as a strategic engineering hub supporting next-generation chip development and global product engineering.

The client required an experienced recruitment partner capable of building multiple specialist teams within aggressive timelines while maintaining exceptionally high technical hiring standards.

 

The Challenge

Semiconductor hiring is about as competitive as talent markets get, anywhere. The client needed experienced VLSI professionals across several domains, and most of them were already employed at leading semiconductor companies.

Here's what made it trickier. Most candidates were deep specialists in just one part of the chip design lifecycle, so it wasn't enough to just find skilled people, we had to find the right combination of them to build teams that actually worked well together.

The client also wanted to keep this quiet. No unnecessary attention around its India expansion.

That's where Prism HRC came in, as the strategic talent acquisition partner for setting up the new design centre.

 

Roles Hired

Prism HRC successfully recruited talent across the complete semiconductor design lifecycle, including:

Leadership

• Engineering Directors
• Senior Engineering Managers
• Technical Architects
• Program Managers

 

Front-End Design

• ASIC Design Engineers
• RTL Design Engineers
• SoC Design Engineers
• IP Design Engineers

 

Verification

• Design Verification Engineers
• UVM Verification Engineers
• Validation Engineers
• Emulation Engineers

 

Back-End Design

• Physical Design Engineers
• STA Engineers
• DFT Engineers
• Physical Verification Engineers
• Floorplanning Engineers
• Place & Route Engineers

 

Embedded & Platform Engineering

• Embedded Software Engineers
• Firmware Engineers
• FPGA Engineers
• Linux Device Driver Engineers

 

Prism HRC's Approach

Recognising the specialist nature of the assignment, Prism HRC created a dedicated semiconductor recruitment team focused exclusively on this engagement.

Our consultants began by mapping India's semiconductor ecosystem, identifying leading multinational semiconductor companies, fabless organisations, design service firms, and established semiconductor design centres employing professionals with relevant expertise.

We didn't lean on active job seekers for this. Instead, we went with a targeted executive search approach, proactively reaching out to experienced engineers already working on comparable semiconductor products. That's what gave us access to genuinely skilled passive talent, the kind that almost never shows up through regular recruitment channels.

We ran dedicated hiring streams for front-end design, verification, back-end implementation, embedded software, and engineering leadership, all separately. Every candidate went through detailed technical screening covering their domain expertise, the complexity of projects they'd worked on, design ownership, tool proficiency, and hands-on product development experience.

We also held regular hiring reviews with the client's leadership team, to make sure recruitment stayed in step with engineering milestones as the India Design Centre came together.

 

Results Delivered

Over the course of 2025, Prism HRC played a central role in getting the client's India Design Centre off the ground.

• Key Achievements

Successfully hired 120+ semiconductor professionals across multiple engineering functions.

• Built specialist teams covering the complete semiconductor design lifecycle.
• Filled several niche and difficult-to-hire VLSI positions through proactive talent mapping.
• Reduced hiring timelines by approximately 40% through targeted headhunting.
• Maintained a strong offer-to-joining ratio through continuous candidate engagement.
• Enabled the client to operationalise its India Design Centre within planned timelines.

 

Business Impact

The successful establishment of the India Design Centre strengthened the client's global engineering capabilities and accelerated its product development roadmap.

By functioning as an extension of the client's talent acquisition team throughout 2025, Prism HRC kept hiring aligned with engineering priorities while consistently bringing in strong semiconductor talent. This engagement reinforced something we already knew, that we can support large scale semiconductor expansion in one of the toughest hiring markets in the industry.

 

Why Prism HRC

Hiring for semiconductor roles takes specialist market knowledge, real technical understanding, and access to passive talent that most recruiters simply can't reach.

Prism HRC brings together deep expertise across semiconductor, embedded systems, VLSI, AI hardware and advanced engineering recruitment to help global tech companies build world class engineering teams. Whether it's standing up a brand new design centre or scaling an existing R&D organisation, we deliver the specialist talent that actually moves innovation forward.