More than 166 universities nationwide now offer programs related to semiconductor technologies and engineering, attracting around 134,000 new students each year. However, specialized programs in chip design and semiconductor technology only began expanding significantly in the 2024-2026 period. Mr. Nguyen Duc Minh, Vice-Dean of the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the Hanoi University of Science and Technology, said semiconductors are among the engineering fields with “very high requirements” for human resources.
According to experts and businesses, however, the challenge is not simply about the number of engineers being trained but, more importantly, the quality of these graduates and their ability to meet real-world job requirements.
Quality imperative
Mr. Minh said many of the University’s graduates have secured good incomes within five years or so of graduation. However, this does not mean that every student graduating in semiconductors will easily find a job or earn a high salary. “If students study because it is a trend, or study only enough to pass their courses, there is no such thing as a good job with a high salary,” Mr. Minh said. Expanding training capacity, therefore, needs to go hand-in-hand with improving graduate quality.
In practice, the semiconductor industry has characteristics that distinguish it from many other fields. Students need not only a solid foundation in electrical engineering, electronics, integrated circuits (ICs), and design, but also the ability to work with the tools, processes, and technical requirements used by businesses. These technologies are, however, evolving rapidly. This raises a major question for Vietnam’s semiconductor workforce development: how to move from training large numbers of students to developing engineers who are genuinely capable of contributing to industry projects.
According to Ms. Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy, Director of the Training Center at the Southeast Asia Institute for Advanced Technology (AIAT), the semiconductor industry requires continuous training, retraining, and skills upgrading throughout a person’s professional career. “This is the ‘science of sciences’ and requires long-term investment,” she said. “Developing talented people in the field requires four to ten years. Turning an engineer into an inventor requires nurturing curiosity and passion as well as a constant desire to explore and conquer new challenges.”
Behind tiny semiconductor chips, she continued, are highly-complex manufacturing processes. From the initial raw materials used to produce wafers, semiconductor manufacturing involves hundreds of stages before fabrication begins. The entire process can involve around 30,000 production steps, illustrating the scale and sophistication of the industry.
Extending internships
From a business perspective, Mr. Le Quoc Trong, Product Manager at Willas Electronic Vietnam, part of Taiwan (China)’s Willas Electronic Corp, said career opportunities in chip design are currently expanding rapidly. Many international companies are increasing their R&D operations in Vietnam and have significant demand for IC design engineers.
Chip manufacturing in Vietnam, meanwhile, remains at an early stage of development. The country is beginning to build the foundations of its semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, while many universities have launched semiconductor programs or are training their first cohorts of students. This has created differences in workforce demand across the value chain. According to Mr. Trong, employment opportunities in manufacturing will gradually expand as Vietnam’s domestic semiconductor ecosystem develops.
However, for these “building blocks” to develop into an engineering workforce capable of meeting industry requirements, the gap between education and business needs must be narrowed. Mr. Nguyen Trong Van, Regional Manager (Vietnam & Thailand) at Gowin Semiconductor, agreed that this gap remains, though there have been positive signs from growing cooperation between businesses and universities. One necessary change, he said, is to extend student internships.
“Student internships typically last around two months at the moment,” he explained. “Engineering students may have longer internships, but this is still not enough for them to participate fully in an engineering project. Two months is only enough for students to become familiar with the working environment and the product. By the time they begin to understand the work, the internship is over.”
Mr. Van proposed extending internships to around six months and counting them as the equivalent of one or two academic courses. This would allow students to participate in a real-world project for a sufficient period, from understanding requirements and becoming familiar with tools to addressing problems that arise during implementation. More importantly, the process would help students identify gaps in their skills before entering the labor market.
Only through direct involvement in product development, he believes, can students encounter the challenges that arise in real-world research and manufacturing environments. This can also help bring university curricula closer to the requirements of industry.
Industry in the classroom
Direct business involvement in education is considered an important factor in improving the quality of Vietnam’s semiconductor workforce. Mr. Alex Chan, General Director of Willas Electronic Vietnam, said Vietnamese students have strong foundations, are intelligent, and can quickly absorb new technologies. However, one limitation is that they have relatively few opportunities to participate in real-world projects with global companies.
Taiwan (China)’s experience shows that combining theory with practical training from the university level plays an important role in developing a semiconductor engineering workforce. “From the university level, education in Taiwan (China) has placed a strong emphasis on combining practical experience with theory,” he said.
Vietnam, he noted, is still at an early stage of semiconductor development but has an advantage as more foreign companies invest in the country, expand their operations, and create internship and employment opportunities for students. This also points to a new approach to semiconductor workforce development: rather than waiting until students graduate before businesses begin recruiting, companies should become involved in training at an earlier stage.
In electronics generally, and semiconductors in particular, product development cannot be separated from the education and industrial ecosystem. Stronger connections between universities, businesses, and society can create an environment in which students acquire academic knowledge while gaining exposure to products and real-world challenges.
As businesses become more deeply involved in education, students can gain earlier access to technologies, equipment, product development processes, and actual market requirements. At the same time, companies can play a more proactive role in developing a workforce aligned with future requirements.
ManpowerGroup’s 2026 Global Engineering Labor Market Report forecast a shortage of more than 200,000 semiconductor engineers in the Asia-Pacific region in the years to come. Vietnam is also facing a serious shortage of semiconductor talent, and currently meets only around 20 per cent of the industry’s actual demand.
The country currently has more than 50 chip design companies, employing around 7,000 engineers. Major technology groups such as Renesas, Ampere, Intel, Marvell, Synopsys, Cadence, and Realtek have established or expanded R&D operations in Vietnam, creating substantial demand for semiconductor engineers that simply must be met.
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