A machine inside someone else's laboratory
On 5 December 2023, Applied Materials and CEA-Leti announced a joint laboratory. The release said it would sit at CEA-Leti in Grenoble and feature several of Applied's 200 mm and 300 mm wafer processing systems for materials evaluation and device validation. Sébastien Dauvé, CEA-Leti's chief executive, put it plainly: "The joint lab, which is based at CEA-Leti, will host Applied Materials scientists and involve some of its latest-generation equipment".
That sentence describes something easy to miss from outside. The company did not open a factory in Grenoble. It put its own machines and its own scientists inside a public research institute. A job seeker who reads "Applied Materials, Grenoble" on a CV or a job board learns a place and an employer. They do not learn the activity: research, field service, sales or production.
Chip factories run on machines that someone else designs, builds and keeps running. Three of the companies that make those machines are present around Grenoble and Annecy, and each one is present in a different way: a laboratory shared with a public institute, a research partnership, and a factory. This piece reads what each company has printed, with its date, and explains what that means for someone who wants to work there.
That is the question this piece is about. Around Grenoble and Annecy, the companies that supply the fabs are part of the chip industry too. But "an equipment maker in the region" can mean very different jobs. We look at three cases, each documented in its own company's papers, and two smaller ones that show where the record stops.
Four kinds of presence, each as its own document describes it
| Company | What the document establishes | Place | Document date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Applied Materials | Joint laboratory hosted by a public institute | CEA-Leti, Grenoble | 5 Dec 2023 |
| ASML | CEA-Leti named among key partners | Partnership; no French site stated | Annual report signed 25 Feb 2026 |
| Pfeiffer Vacuum | Listed production site | Annecy | Report dated 5 Aug 2025 |
| Tokyo Electron | Office; European headquarters described as sales and service | Meylan, near Grenoble | Read 7 Nov 2026 |
Sources 1 Applied Materials · 5 ASML Holding N.V. · 6 Pfeiffer Vacuum Technology AG · 10 Tokyo Electron
Applied Materials: what exists, and what was planned
The 2023 release describes a laboratory that exists: Applied's equipment and scientists, hosted at CEA-Leti. On 16 June 2025, the two partners published a second release. Its verbs are different. They said they "plan to expand" the laboratory, and that it "would be equipped with state-of-the-art advanced packaging tools".
The difference matters. A plan is not an installation, and we have found no later document that says the expansion was completed. We describe the laboratory as it was established in 2023 and the expansion as it was proposed in 2025. We do not merge the two.
The same laboratory in two releases
| Item | 5 December 2023 | 16 June 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Announced and based at CEA-Leti | Expansion planned |
| Equipment | 200 mm and 300 mm systems | New equipment, and advanced packaging tools it "would be equipped with" |
| What we can say | The laboratory exists | An expansion was proposed; completion is not documented |
Sources 1 Applied Materials · 2 Applied Materials
Applied's own job board shows a second side of the company in the region. On 7 November 2026 it listed two roles in Bernin, the town next to Crolles. Bernin is not Crolles, and the postings say Bernin.
The first, a process support engineer for dielectric deposition products, was posted on 17 September 2026. Its work starts after a machine is installed at a customer's fab: qualifying the process on that equipment, then improving its performance and its cost of ownership. It asks for a master's degree or a doctorate in chemistry, physics, materials engineering, electrical engineering, optoelectronics or a related field, and about a quarter of the time travelling to customer sites.
The second, an AIx field service engineer, was posted on 2 September 2026. AIx is Applied's data platform; the posting describes it as "a secure platform that combines actionable data from more than 10,000 sensors". The role serves as "the main point of contact for customer site digital tools" and asks the holder to be present at the Grenoble site for at least half of working time. It prints a salary range of €44,000 to €60,500. That is the range for this one posting. It is not a market rate for the profession, and we do not treat it as one.
Neither job is in the joint laboratory. Both sit with customers and their machines. One company, three different kinds of work: research inside a public institute, process engineering at a customer's fab, and the data tools that connect the two.
ASML: a partner, not a site
ASML makes lithography machines, which print circuit patterns onto chips. Its annual report for 2025, signed on 25 February 2026, names "CEA-Leti in France" among its key partners. The others it names are the technical universities in Delft, Eindhoven and Twente, the Advanced Research Center for Nanolithography and the research organisation TNO in the Netherlands, Fraunhofer in Germany and imec in Belgium. CEA-Leti is the only French name on that list. The same report counts 5,100 suppliers, against 5,150 a year earlier. Those are worldwide totals. The report does not say how many are French, and we do not estimate it.
We looked for more. Earlier research for this piece found claims of an ASML presence in Crolles, but no document we could open established one, so we have dropped the claim. On 7 November 2026, ASML's careers site, filtered for France, returned only roles in Veldhoven, in the Netherlands. That is what we saw on one day. It is not a statement about ASML's plans.
For a job seeker, that is a useful result in itself. A company can be tied to a region's research without that tie showing up as a job advert. As documented, the link between ASML and Grenoble runs through a public laboratory.
Pfeiffer Vacuum: a factory in Annecy
The third case is the most concrete. Pfeiffer Vacuum's half-year report describes a portfolio of vacuum pumps, leak detectors, and measurement and analysis instruments. The report, for the half-year to 30 June 2025 and dated 5 August 2025 in Asslar, lists ten production sites. Annecy is the only one in France; the others are in Germany, South Korea, Romania, the United States, Vietnam and China. The report states that it was neither audited nor reviewed by an auditor.
The same report counts 3,945 employees on 30 June 2025: 1,381 in Germany and 2,564 in other countries. That breakdown stops at the German border. It does not give a French figure, and we do not print one: the press reports we found give different numbers in different years, and none of them is current.
In May 2023, the company announced a €75 million investment plan for the Annecy site. Britta Giesen, its chief executive, was among the business leaders invited to the Choose France summit at Versailles on 15 May, where the plan was announced. Bref Eco quoted her in French; in our translation: "We want to double the activity of our French subsidiary, with a target of €600 million8 in sales by 2030, and create 100 to 150 additional jobs". Those are targets, stated in 2023. We have found no document that says whether they have been met, and this piece does not suggest either way. We also leave out the plan's length, because the reports we read do not agree on it.
What the company is asking for today is easier to see. On 7 November 2026, Pfeiffer's careers site showed an internship in Annecy, "Stagiaire assistant ingénieur en mécanique / mécatronique", with a displayed date of 23 October 2026. The intern joins the design office of its AFS ("Advanced Fab Solutions") activity, which specialises in metrology and cleaning machines for semiconductor production. The tasks listed are to fit a new metrology system onto a machine, to define the electrical and automation needs, such as sensors and cameras, that make it work with existing machines, and to work with the mechanical design team.
One task stands out: "Faire les plans de détails des solutions imaginées et travailler avec nos fournisseurs pour réaliser un démonstrateur qui sera installé chez un client". In our translation: draw the detailed plans of the solutions devised, and work with suppliers to build a demonstrator that will be installed at a customer's site. That is a task the posting describes. It does not prove the demonstrator was built.
The candidate profile is just as specific. The posting asks for an engineering student in mechanical engineering and/or mechatronics, on a mid-course or final-year placement of at least six months. It names the software: computer-aided design, ideally Siemens NX; Teamcenter for product lifecycle management; and SAP. English is listed as a plus. For a student, that list says more than any headcount could: it names the tools to learn before applying.
What three postings ask, as printed
| Posting | Where | The work | The candidate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Applied Materials, process support engineer | Bernin; ~25% travel | Process qualification after installation; performance and cost of ownership | Master's or doctorate in chemistry, physics, materials engineering, electrical engineering, optoelectronics or a related field |
| Applied Materials, AIx field service engineer | Bernin; ≥50% at the Grenoble site | Main contact for customer-site digital tools | As printed; range €44,000–€60,500 for this posting only |
| Pfeiffer Vacuum, mechanics/mechatronics intern | Annecy | Fit a metrology system; define electrical and automation needs; detail plans; supplier demonstrator for a customer | Engineering student in mechanical engineering and/or mechatronics; CAD (ideally Siemens NX), Teamcenter, SAP; at least six months |
Sources 3 Applied Materials · 4 Applied Materials · 9 Pfeiffer Vacuum
Two cases where the record stops
Tokyo Electron, the Japanese equipment maker, has an office near Grenoble. Its locations page, read on 7 November 2026, lists "Office：Grenoble" in Meylan and calls the head office the "European sales and service Headquarters". A company article dated 14 December 2024 mentions employees "at the Tokyo Electron Europe (TEE) Grenoble office" taking part in a charity run. That is an office. Nothing we read describes a factory or a research site in France, and we do not suggest one. Not finding a document does not prove the activity is absent.
Lam Research is the opposite case: an old link. In a release dated 2 July 2001, ST Crolles' photolithography and etch area manager said a Lam programme had allowed "consolidating service and material support under one complete program". He added that the two sides had "jointly agreed on the cost per process step, which allows us to directly correlate support costs with wafer starts". That sentence shows what a service contract measures: the cost of keeping machines running, set against the wafers they process. It is also twenty-five years old. It does not show that Lam owns any part of the site, or that the arrangement continues. We include it because it shows a third kind of relationship, the service contract inside a customer's fab, and how quickly such a record can go out of date.
What this means for your career
The five companies above share an industry and a region. They do not share a kind of job. A role "at an equipment maker near Grenoble" might be in a joint laboratory, at a customer's fab, on a data platform, in a sales office or on a factory floor. Before applying, or before comparing two offers, it is worth asking three questions of the posting itself.
- Who is the employer? The equipment maker, its research partner, or the customer whose fab you will work in. The badge on the door and the name on the contract may differ.
- What is the work? Research, process qualification, field service, data tools, design or production. The duties section answers this; the company name does not.
- Where is it done? Bernin is not Crolles, and an office in Meylan is not a factory. Read the location and the travel share together.
A posting is a dated document too. Read the day it was posted, check that the role is still open on the employer's own site, and do not plan around a listing you can no longer find.
None of this tells you whether these companies will hire more people next year. The documents do not say, and we do not guess. What they do show is that the machines behind the region's chips create several distinct careers, each with its own entry route. Our CEA-Leti and Crolles pieces describe the institute and the fabs these companies work with.