Dialog Semiconductor, the analogue and mixed signal company, wants to add another 30 analogue designers to its Edinburgh design centre over the next three years, and is also looking for designers to boost its teams in Swindon and in Germany.
“We’re turning away custom opportunities because we don’t have enough engineers. We’re recruiting every week. We’re interviewing twelve designers, all from the same European company, as we speak,” Dr Jalal Bagherli, CEO of Dialog, told
EW last Friday, “we started in Edinburgh last year with three designers and already we’re up to 20.”
With the Swindon designer-count of 30, that gives Dialog 70 design engineers in the UK, about 40+ in Germany, and six in Japan. He’d like to raise that overall figure from 120 designers to 160, but concedes: “I can’t find 200”.
Like everyone else in the analogue industry, Bagherli is looking for analogue designers with five to seven years of experience.
These are an increasingly scarce commodity as so many semiconductor companies look to get into analogue as being the highest margin sector in the industry. Asked if he could command the 70 per cent grow margins of Linear Tech and Maxim, Bagherli replied that he wished he could but there currently at around 45 per cent.
Asked if he offered his designers financial bonuses based on the sales volumes of the IC they design, as some of the US analogue companies do, Bagherli replied: “No. In Europe the motivation is not the same. We believe we pay above the market rate. We find European engineers are more interested in technical challenges, and in interfacing with customers.”
A large part of Dialog’s business is in custom design, but custom for high volume applications. “Our product volumes are never under 10 million units," said Bagherli.
Currently the Dialog business splits 70% Asic to 30% ASSP (application specific standard part), but the intention is to grow it to 50/50 over the next three years.
Although Dialog is a twenty year old company, which was once part of the TEMIC stable of chip companies, Bagherli is trying to inject a fresh spirit into the company.
“I’m trying to give it the feeling of a fast-moving start-up," he said.
That means options for everyone, and a flat hierarchy with only four levels of management from CEO to the most junior staffer.