Asian Tech Press (Jan 24) -- TSMC and MediaTek, two major chipmakers, plan to hire more than 10,000 engineers this year to support aggressive business expansion plans and maintain technology leadership amid a trend of global economies pushing local industries.

TSMC plans to hire about 8,000 engineers in 2022, comparable to last year's level, people familiar with the matter said. TSMC, the world's largest chip foundry, is expanding massively, building and expanding factories in China, the United States and Japan.

TSMC announced plans to spend up to $44 billion this year to expand production capacity, ease global chip shortages and meet growing customer demand for chips for artificial intelligence and 5G applications. TSMC said it has not yet finalized its hiring plans for 2022 but said its hiring target last year was about 8,000 people. TSMC currently has more than 60,000 employees worldwide.

Meanwhile, another Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek said it would hire more than 2,000 employees this year. The company recently overtook U.S. rival Qualcomm in the high-end 5G market. MediaTek hired more than 2,000 engineers last year, bringing the total number of employees to about 19,300.

MediaTek is currently hiring for positions mainly located in Taiwan. But the company said it plans to increase hiring in India. MediaTek has a research and development team of more than 1,000 people in India and has found "excellent chip talent." MediaTek also said the company's R&D spending in 2021 will be about 100 billion New Taiwan dollars ($3.6 billion), while this year's budget will increase by 10 to 20 percent. 2020, MediaTek's R&D budget is 77.3 billion New Taiwan dollars.