By Wen-Yee Lee
TAIPEI, April 17 (Reuters) - Tesla is seeking semiconductor engineers in Taiwan for its Terafab artificial intelligence chip complex, according to job postings on its website.
Taiwan is home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, TSMC, and has a highly specialised workforce with experience in leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing.
Tesla has posted nine engineering roles in Taiwan for its Terafab project, seeking candidates with more than five years of experience in advanced chipmaking
processes.
The roles describe Terafab as a “vertically integrated semiconductor factory” combining logic, memory, packaging, test and lithography mask production under one roof.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk last month unveiled the Terafab project to build a massive artificial intelligence chip fab to power his robotics and data center ambitions.
Several roles require experience in advanced chip manufacturing nodes below 7 nanometres and reference 2-nanometre-class technologies, where Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has extensive expertise.
One of the roles also requires familiarity with advanced packaging flows such as CoWoS and SoIC, technologies that were developed by TSMC.
The engineering positions span several core front-end fabrication steps, including lithography, etching, thin films and chemical mechanical planarization, as well as yield engineering and process integration.
The factory is expected to support chip families including edge-inference processors, space-hardened chips for orbital satellites and high-bandwidth memory, according to the job postings.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The hiring push comes as demand for AI drives companies to secure more advanced chipmaking capacity, amid constraints at TSMC.
When asked about Terafab, TSMC said on Thursday it would not underestimate competitors, but added there are “no shortcuts” in the industry, as it takes two to three years to build a new fabrication plant.
(Reporting by Wen-Yee Lee; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)
