What jobs are there in the semiconductor industry? From chip design to the fab to test

In one sentence: semiconductor jobs are first sorted by the path a chip takes. A chip design company designs the circuit, a wafer fab builds it layer by layer on wafers, a test-and-assembly house tests every chip and packages it, and other companies supply the tools and materials; each stage has its own jobs. Inside a fab, roles are then sorted by what each person looks after: what the tools make, the tools themselves, the flow of lots, the building's water, power and gases, and quality.

How are semiconductor jobs grouped? Start with the stage

Stage	What happens there	Common roles
Chip design	Design the circuit, simulate and check it, and hand over the design to be made into photomasks	Digital IC design, analog IC design, verification, layout and physical design
Wafer fab	Wafers go through hundreds of steps that build transistors and wiring layer by layer	Technician, Manufacturing, process, equipment, process integration, yield, Facilities, QA, Production control, mask, IT, R&D
Assembly and test	Test every chip, cut the wafer apart, package each chip, then test again	Test engineer, assembly process engineer, customer liaison
Suppliers	Make tools and materials, and install and maintain tools at the fab	Vendor engineer

These stages are often separate companies (see What is a foundry?), and some companies do everything from design to manufacturing. Jobs that every industry has, such as sales, purchasing and HR, are left out here.

What jobs, and what kinds of engineers, are there in a chip fab?

A fab has many job titles. Sorting them by what each one looks after makes them easier to follow:

Looks after	Role	What they do
The tool, up close	Technician	Runs tools by the SOP and loads and unloads the lots the overhead transport can't deliver; when a tool lights up, follows the OCAP: stop first, report first
The flow of lots	Manufacturing	Dispatch and tracking, so lots go on from step to step
The flow of lots	Production control	Plans when each lot finishes and ships; when a tool stops, says how late the lots will be
What the tools make	Process engineer	Owns a few steps in one area: recipes, measurements, control charts, and whether a lot can go on
The tools	Equipment engineer	Maintenance, parts, alarms; once a tool is fixed, hands it to Process for the qual run
The whole product	Process integration engineer	Looks at hundreds of steps as one flow, and works back from electrical results and yield to the step at fault
The whole product	Yield and product engineers	Read test data and wafer maps to find where yield is lost
The whole building	Facilities engineer	Water, power, air conditioning, gases, chemicals and exhaust, around the clock
Quality	Quality engineer	Outgoing inspection, incident records, and checking that fixes get done
The "negatives" for exposure	Mask engineer	Receives and inspects the fab's photomasks and sends them out for cleaning
Systems and data	IT and automation	The MES that records where every lot is, the OHT that carries lots automatically, tool connections and data
New products and processes	R&D integration and R&D process engineers	Try them first on the R&D line, then hand them to the production fab once they are stable

At design companies and test-and-assembly houses, PE often means product engineer: see Is a PE a process engineer or a product engineer?.

What's the difference between a PE, an EE and a PIE?

A tool that stops in the middle of the night shows the difference best:

• The equipment engineer (EE) checks the hardware: which part is at fault, and fixes it.
• The process engineer (PE) checks the wafers: whether the ones stuck inside can be saved. After the repair they run the qual run, and only when the results are right does the tool go back to production.
• Process integration (PIE) looks at the whole product: whether a lot on hold continues, gets reworked or is scrapped.

More on how they split the work: What's the difference between a process engineer and an equipment engineer? and What does a process integration engineer do?.

What jobs are there in chip design, assembly and test, and at suppliers?

• Chip design: digital IC designers turn what the chip has to do into logic circuits; analog IC designers build circuits that handle continuous signals, such as amplifiers and power supplies; verification engineers use simulation to confirm the design works before it is handed over; layout and physical design engineers draw the circuit as patterns, layer by layer, and check them against the fab's design rules. Handing over the whole design to be made into masks is called tape-out.
• Test-and-assembly house: the test engineer writes the test program and sets each limit; the assembly process engineer owns the line of dicing, wire bonding and molding; the customer liaison answers the customer's "Where is this lot now?" See How are chips tested? and What is chip packaging?.
• Suppliers: the vendor engineer installs, maintains and repairs their own company's tools in customers' fabs.

Common abbreviations

Abbreviation	Stands for	Meaning
PE	Process Engineer	Process engineer; at design companies and test-and-assembly houses, often product engineer
EE	Equipment Engineer	Equipment engineer; at school, EE means electrical engineering
PIE	Process Integration Engineer	Process integration engineer, often just "Integration"
MFG	Manufacturing	Manufacturing
PC	Production Control	Production control
QA	Quality Assurance	Quality assurance
TE	Test Engineer	Test engineer
OP	Operator	Technician, operator
PM	Preventive Maintenance	In a fab, the preventive maintenance of tools, not a role (at design companies, often product or project manager)

How do you tell which one suits you?

Start with the kind of problem you enjoy:

• Finding causes in data: process, process integration, yield, test.
• Working with your hands and understanding machines: equipment, Facilities, vendor engineer.
• Coordinating people and schedules: Manufacturing, Production control, customer liaison.
• Making procedures solid: QA.
• Designing circuits: IC design, verification, layout and physical design.

Then think about hours. A fab runs 24 hours a day, so technicians and Manufacturing usually work rotating shifts, and so do some equipment and Facilities engineers; other engineers mostly work days but take turns on-call (see Why do chip fabs run 24 hours a day? and Is working in a semiconductor fab hard?). A chip design company has no production line, so there are no shifts to cover for the tools.

To start from your degree, read Which degrees work in a chip fab, and what does each one do there?; if you're torn between chip design and the fab, read VLSI design vs working in a fab: what's the difference?; for the test-and-assembly side, read What is an OSAT, and what happens in a test-and-assembly house?.

In fab24hr

fab24hr is a free 3D web game with 31 roles you can play for a shift. The R&D line has the R&D integration engineer and R&D process engineers in seven areas. The production fab has process engineers in seven areas and equipment engineers in seven areas, plus Manufacturing, process integration, Facilities, QA, Production control and the mask engineer. The test-and-assembly house has the test engineer, the assembly process engineer and the customer liaison. Tap "Clock in", choose "A day in the fab", then on the "Your role today" card tap a place, swipe to the person, and tap an area if the job has them. Technicians, the section chief and the vendor engineer are people you meet in the fab; there is no chip design role, and the main story, The life of a chip, starts on the day the design is handed to the fab. For each role's day, see Who works in a chip fab and A day in the life of a fab engineer; articles on single jobs are in Working in a fab. The companies, people, lot numbers and tools in the game are fictional; what each job does comes from public, general sources, and real titles and splits of work differ between companies.