A broad view of the Scottish semiconductor labour market, from chip design to the fabs, weighted to entry-stage roles because that is what the SPRINT platform connects. Organisations are named. Individuals are not.
So what for SPRINT: the employer base is real and the capital is committed. What is missing is a formal route into fabrication roles beyond one employer, any apprenticeship route into IC design, and an employer base for advanced packaging. Each needs an owner.
Scotland holds roughly a fifth of the UK's semiconductor fabrication facilities and one of its densest chip-design clusters. The National Semiconductor Strategy (2023) and the DSIT workforce study (April 2025) both name the Edinburgh design ecosystem and the central-belt fabs as strategically significant. The workforce falls into five clusters.
Cirrus Logic (Quartermile), Analog Devices, Renesas, STMicroelectronics, AMD (Penicuik), Allegro MicroSystems (Musselburgh), AST SpaceMobile, Cadence and Siemens EDA. Analogue, mixed-signal, digital design, verification, physical design, layout and the EDA and firmware roles around them. About 610 people including the wider area.
Coherent (Todd Campus), Sivers Semiconductors (InP lasers, mid-ramp), Vector Photonics, Neuranics (shortlisted for Investment Zone support for a new facility), NXP's Glasgow verification and commercial teams. Behind them, the University of Glasgow's James Watt Nanofabrication Centre (1,200 m² cleanroom) and Strathclyde's Institute of Photonics. About 395 people.
Diodes Incorporated at Greenock (150 mm and 200 mm silicon lines, over 300 staff), Semefab at Glenrothes (MEMS and specialist processes, about 50 staff), Clas-SiC at Lochgelly (the UK's only dedicated silicon-carbide fab, 76 staff), plus MacDermid Alpha's Glenrothes operations. Kirkcaldy, Glenrothes and Greenock together hold about 105 people in the data; the fabs' SME workforces are under-counted.
Leonardo (Edinburgh) hires firmware, FPGA, test and manufacturing engineers from the same pool. Plexus (Livingston) covers electronics manufacturing and test. Spire, AAC Clyde Space and AST SpaceMobile absorb ASIC and validation engineers. Aberdeen's 175 people are mostly electronics roles adjacent to energy.
The ten families below are a starting taxonomy built from what the Scottish market actually employs and advertises. Counts are of people currently in those roles in Scotland, from public career records, and of live adverts observed on 9 September 2026.
| Role family | People | Early-career | Senior | Live vacancies | Early-stage | Scottish entry route |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wafer fab: process, equipment, yield, cleanroom | 319 | 30 | 123 | 13 | 3 | Partial. Diodes graduate programme; Clas-SiC Graduate Apprenticeship (Heriot-Watt); NMIS short course. Only the fab family advertises technician roles. |
| Analogue and mixed-signal IC design | 254 | 8 | 137 | 29 | 0 | Graduate scheme only. No apprenticeship framework; conversion via Edinburgh's Analogue Mixed Signal Laboratory course. |
| Digital design and verification | 214 | 6 | 91 | 30 | 0 | Graduate scheme only. Verification is the fastest adjacent route: software engineers with Python, C or SystemVerilog. |
| Test and product engineering | 197 | 7 | 78 | 9 | 0 | Informal. Graduate route at Leonardo, Plexus, Expleo; quality engineers from automotive and aerospace transfer in. |
| Commercial and customer-facing | 172 | 6 | 95 | 6 | 0 | Missing. Field application engineers, product managers, product definers, technical sales; no structured entry anywhere in Scotland. |
| Packaging, reliability and failure analysis | 161 | 4 | 63 | 6 | 0 | Missing. NMIS packaging line is infrastructure-stage with no employer base; no university programme produces packaging engineers. |
| Semiconductor software, EDA and firmware | 138 | 3 | 57 | 5 | 1 | Missing. Thinnest entry layer of any family; one structured entry advert (an FPGA academy role at £55,000). |
| Compound semiconductor and photonics fabrication | 113 | 12 | 38 | 1 | 0 | Informal. Research route via the Glasgow and Strathclyde cleanrooms; no employer-led scheme at Coherent, Sivers or Neuranics. |
| Physical design and layout | 93 | 3 | 39 | 1 | 0 | Graduate scheme only. Smallest design family; probably a specialism inside IC design for platform purposes. |
| Explicit early-career roles (cross-cutting) | 207 | 109 | 26 | 7 | 0 | People in graduate, intern, trainee or technician titles across the sector; a measure of entry hiring, not a family. |
Early-career and senior are read from current job titles (graduate, junior, trainee, apprentice, technician, intern versus senior, principal, lead, head, manager, director). People between those markers are counted as mid-career.
Cirrus Logic 27 · Leonardo 10 · NXP 6 · Diodes 4 · Renesas 4 · Coherent 3 · then two each from Emerson, Allegro, STMicroelectronics, AAC Clyde Space, AMD, AST SpaceMobile, Plexus and RSE, and one each from Analog Devices, Alba Orbital, CodaOctopus, Spire, Qualitrol, Chemify, Expleo, Ouster and ALTEN. Only 4 of the 107 roles go through an agency; this sector recruits directly.
Manufacturing Technician, Leonardo (Edinburgh, £31,000 to £35,500) · two Manufacturing Technician roles via Randstad (Renfrewshire) · Intern AI and Software Engineer, NXP (Glasgow). Nearby but not in the live count: Diodes' graduate engineer programme at Greenock, the FPGA Academy structured-entry role in Edinburgh (£55,000), and graduate schemes at Cirrus Logic, Analog Devices and Renesas that recruit through their own sites.
By family, digital design and verification carries 30 live roles and analogue 29, more than half the total, none labelled entry-stage. Wafer fab is the exception: 13 live roles, three of them technician level, from Diodes, Semefab and the Glenrothes operations. The pattern is that design employers hire experienced engineers openly and graduates quietly, and the fabs are the only part of the sector visibly recruiting at technician level.
Electronics, electrical engineering and physics graduates from Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt, Strathclyde and Glasgow are the primary intake into design and device roles, through employer graduate schemes at Cirrus Logic, Analog Devices, Renesas and Diodes. The University of Edinburgh's Analogue Mixed Signal Laboratory course is the nearest conversion route into IC design. Photonics and III-V graduates come through the James Watt Nanofabrication Centre and Strathclyde's Institute of Photonics, but no employer-led scheme connects that output to Coherent, Sivers or Neuranics.
Clas-SiC's Graduate Apprenticeship with Heriot-Watt is the only documented apprenticeship into fab roles. Heriot-Watt's Engineering Design and Manufacture (Electronic) Graduate Apprenticeship is adjacent but not a chip-design route. No Skills Development Scotland framework covers IC design. The NMIS Manufacturing Skills Academy's Fundamentals of Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology short course is the most accessible bridge into fab operations for adjacent entrants, and no fab employer has yet said publicly that it accepts the course as a hiring qualification.
| From | Into | How ready |
|---|---|---|
| Software engineers (Python, C, SystemVerilog) | Design verification, validation, EDA, firmware | High. UVM is teachable; Scotland's software graduate output is far larger than its IC design output. The single most scalable route into the design side. |
| Pharmaceutical and life-sciences cleanroom technicians (Lothian, Tayside, Fife) | Fab technician, production operator, equipment maintenance | High. Gowning, contamination control and process documentation transfer directly; the NMIS short course is the bridge. |
| Chemistry, chemical engineering and materials graduates | Process, yield and device engineering | High, with a graduate scheme or a supervised first year. |
| Instrumentation and maintenance engineers from oil and gas (Aberdeen) and defence electronics | Fab equipment engineering | Medium to high. Relocation to Inverclyde or Fife is the practical barrier. |
| Quality engineers from automotive and aerospace | Semiconductor quality, reliability, failure analysis | High. Same disciplines; the sector rarely advertises the roles as entry-level. |
| Technical sales, product and account managers from other technology sectors; engineers wanting a customer-facing role; returners | Field application engineering, product management, technical sales | High. This is where returners most often re-enter, and where the sector has no structured entry. |
| Band | What it buys in Scotland today | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| £24,000 to £30,000 | Cleanroom production operator or fab technician; the floor of the fab employment ladder. | MacDermid Alpha production operator £25,000 to £30,000 (Glenrothes); equipment maintenance engineer £28,000 to £35,000. |
| £31,000 to £38,000 | Manufacturing technician; graduate engineer entry; graduate test or product engineer. | Leonardo technician £31,000 to £35,500; graduate ASIC validation £35,000 (Edinburgh); UK graduate test and product band £30,000 to £38,000. |
| £35,000 to £45,000 | Graduate analogue or digital design engineer; graduate process, yield or device engineer; graduate verification engineer. | UK sector guide graduate design £35,000 to £42,000; Greenock process and yield adverts from £35,000; verification £32,000 to £45,000. |
| £45,000 to £70,000 | Mid-level: process engineer with two to four years, FPGA and DSP design, firmware, quality engineer, mid-level analogue or verification. | Diodes senior manufacturing process engineer £42,000 to £62,000; CodaOctopus FPGA/DSP £50,000 to £70,000; senior quality engineer £55,000; Scotland electronics design median £60,000. |
| £70,000 to £100,000 | Staff, lead and principal design and firmware roles. | Staff analogue design £60,000 to £80,000; staff design verification £80,000 to £100,000; principal FPGA £70,000 to £80,000; Leonardo lead electronics to £85,000. |
| £100,000 and above | Specialist and contract premiums. | Senior physical design at Analog Devices Glasgow £130,000; senior analogue/RF contract £125,000 to £135,000 annualised; AI compiler engineer £100,000. |
Salary figures are published employer or advert figures, or published UK guides where noted; all are market estimates and presented as such. Early-career pay for photonics fabrication, packaging and commercial roles is not published in Scotland; the room can fill that gap.
Ten families, with the early-stage roles the platform could realistically fill first. Each is a proposal to accept, merge or strike.
| Family | Priority roles (entry to mid) | Suggested status |
|---|---|---|
| IC design: analogue, mixed-signal, digital | Analogue design engineer, digital design engineer, mixed-signal designer | Priority. Name the employer that commits the first structured cohort, or record that an SDS framework is needed before this can scale. |
| Design verification and validation | Design verification engineer, DFT engineer, silicon validation engineer | Priority. Pilot a software-to-verification conversion intake for 2027 with a university or provider delivering the SystemVerilog/UVM bridge. |
| Wafer fab: process, equipment, yield | Process engineer, equipment engineer, yield engineer | Priority. Ask Diodes to formalise an apprenticeship alongside its graduate programme; ask Semefab to join or mirror the Clas-SiC arrangement. |
| Cleanroom technician and fab operator | Manufacturing technician, production operator, equipment maintenance | Priority. Highest-volume entry point. Get fab employers to recognise the NMIS course; consider a Modern Apprenticeship around Glenrothes and Greenock. |
| Compound semiconductor and photonics fabrication | Laser development engineer, photonics process engineer, epitaxy engineer | Priority. Name whether Coherent or Sivers will run a formal graduate or conversion scheme, with Glasgow or Strathclyde as partner. |
| Test and product engineering | Test engineer, product engineer, reliability engineer | Consider merging with wafer fab for platform purposes; shared adjacent pool and employers. |
| Semiconductor software, EDA and firmware | Firmware engineer, FPGA engineer, embedded software engineer, EDA engineer | Priority. Name the employer to pilot a software-to-firmware conversion intake; test whether the FPGA Academy model can be extended. |
| Packaging, reliability and failure analysis | Packaging engineer, reliability engineer, failure analysis engineer | Priority once anchored. Identify the NMIS packaging line's anchor employers and a college or university partner before designing a route. |
| Physical design and layout | Physical design engineer, IC layout designer | Probably a specialism inside IC design rather than a separate pipeline. |
| Commercial and customer-facing | Field application engineer, product manager, product definer, technical sales engineer | Priority. Test an FAE graduate model (engineering degree plus a commercial placement year) with one or two employers. |
People counts come from an analysis of 9,440 public professional career records located in Scotland, of which 1,868 are people currently in semiconductor roles. Vacancy counts come from live job adverts across Scotland observed on 9 September 2026, de-duplicated across boards. Market facts are drawn from published announcements, the statutory register (Companies House entries for Cirrus Logic, Coherent Scotland and Diodes Holdings UK were checked), government and industry reports, and published salary sources, each dated.
Two cautions. Public career records over-represent large employers, whose staff keep fuller public profiles than SME staff, so Semefab, Clas-SiC and the smaller Glasgow photonics firms are under-counted relative to their real workforces. And career stage is read from job titles, which understates early-career numbers at employers that do not use graduate or junior titles.
This briefing names organisations only. GRW Scout can run a per-employer or per-role-family candidate search on request; that is the product in which individuals are identified.