In October 2025 the European Chips Skills Academy published its estimate that the EU semiconductor ecosystem will lack around 65,000 skilled workers by 2030, down from an initial estimate of 75,400.
Europe’s chip shortage is not mainly a shortage of hands on the factory floor: the people the industry says it cannot find are software engineers, designers and security experts, and the honest way to prepare for this industry is to know which of those jobs you are rehearsing and which ones nobody yet lets you rehearse.
This is the fifth and last piece of the CareerOn Industry Atlas on semiconductors. The first asked where the money is made in a chip. The second asked which suppliers a plant cannot replace. The third asked what Europe’s fabs are building. The fourth set out the arguments the industry has in public. This one asks the question a reader brings to all of them: which job is mine, and how do I practise it before anyone hires me?
We hold this piece to the rules of the series. Every figure comes from a dated document written by the body that holds it. A survey share keeps its base and its caveat. An estimate is printed as an estimate, never as a count of empty posts. A figure spoken at a meeting is printed as the speaker’s. And where CareerOn has no simulation for a job the evidence names, we say so in plain words instead of pointing you at the nearest thing we have.
The gap, as it is estimated
The Academy is a programme co-funded by the European Union, and its Skills Strategy is written for it by a consultancy, DECISION Études & Conseil. That is the document we lean on most, so it is worth being precise about what it is. It is not a register of vacancies. It is a structured estimate, built from industry data and from the answers of practitioners.
The same report puts the average annual shortfall at about 10,800 people.
The estimate rests on 102 experts from 75 organisations who took part in the work in 2025.
Two readings of the headline number are wrong, and both are common. The first is that it measures posts that sit empty today. It does not: it is a projection of demand against supply to the end of the decade. The second is that the smaller new figure means the problem is being solved. The report does not say that either. The estimate moved because the inputs moved, and the report prints the new number with the word “around” in front of it. We keep that word.
The Academy now estimates the EU chip talent gap at around 65,000 by 2030, down from 75,400
- Initial estimate: 75,400 estimated shortfall of skilled workers by 2030, as printed by the European Chips Skills Academy
- October 2025: around 65,000 estimated shortfall of skilled workers by 2030, as printed by the European Chips Skills Academy
estimated shortfall of skilled workers by 2030, as printed by the European Chips Skills Academy
Source 1 European Chips Skills Academy (DECISION Études & Conseil)
What matters for a reader is not the size of the number but its shape. A shortfall this broad does not fall evenly across the industry. Some jobs are hard to fill and some are not, and the report is unusually clear about which is which.
Three documents, written for different reasons, name the same jobs
One source is a survey, and a survey can be wrong. So we looked for documents that had no reason to agree with it: one written by French industry for its own government, and one written by a chipmaker for the people living around its plant.
In January 2025 the French electronics industry signed its sector contract for 2025-2028.
It is a commitment between the industry and the state, and it says the industry has significant recruitment needs “at all levels of qualification”. It then lists the new skills it is looking for: power electronics, embedded artificial intelligence at the edge, advanced sensors, cybersecurity and quantum. The same contract commits the French industry to take part in the European Chips Skills Academy, which is why the two documents read as a pair.
On 9 April 2024 STMicroelectronics held a public meeting in Crolles on skills in microelectronics, as part of the consultation on its plant project.
ST said its jobs run from marketing and design to production, sales and customer support, and require diplomas from the CAP to Bac +8.
That sentence matters more than it looks. It is the company telling its neighbours that a chip plant is not one job repeated a thousand times. It is a ladder, and it starts at a vocational certificate.
An EU survey, a French industry contract and ST each name the jobs they need
| Who, and when | What they printed |
|---|---|
| European Chips Skills Academy, Oct 2025 | software and design engineers remain the two profiles that are the most sought after in the EU with 57% and 52% of the answers respectively |
| French electronics industry contract, Jan 2025 | New skills sought: power electronics, embedded AI (Edge), advanced sensors, cybersecurity, quantum (translated) |
| STMicroelectronics, Crolles meeting, 9 Apr 2024 | Jobs span marketing, design, development, production, sales and customer support, with diplomas from CAP to Bac +8 (translated) |
Sources 1 European Chips Skills Academy (DECISION Études & Conseil) · 2 Comité stratégique de la filière Industrie électronique · 3 STMicroelectronics
Read together, the three documents agree on two things. The need runs across every level of qualification, not only the doctorate. And the scarcest skills are no longer only the ones you learn in a cleanroom: they are design, software, security and embedded intelligence, the skills that sit between the silicon and the product that uses it.
Which jobs the industry says it cannot find
The Academy asked its experts two different questions, and the difference between them is the most useful thing in the report. The first question was which profiles are most sought after. The second was which are hardest to fill. A job can be in demand and easy to hire for. The ones that matter to a candidate are those that are both.
Asked which profiles are most sought after, 57% named software engineers and 52% design engineers.
Cybersecurity experts were named by 47%, data specialists by 42%.
Process engineers and technicians, grouped with maintenance technicians and robotic engineers, received between 24% and 33%.
Test and verification engineers received 26%, applications engineers 20%.
Those shares do not add up to a whole, and they are not meant to. Each expert could name several profiles, so the total runs past a hundred. What the shares show is rank, not size: how often a profile came to mind when practitioners were asked what they lack.
When the experts were asked which profiles are hardest to fill, software engineers and designers each drew 27% and manufacturing profiles only 10% to 15%.
That is the finding a candidate should hold on to. The jobs most people picture when they think of a chip plant, the process and production roles, are wanted, but the industry considers them relatively less difficult to fill. The jobs that are both wanted and hard to fill are the ones that write code, design circuits and protect systems.
By 2030, the report projects shortages of 3,300 system designers, 2,100 analog designers and 2,600 cybersecurity experts.
These are projections, and they are the report’s own. We print them because they give the ranking a scale, not because they are forecasts we would stand behind in our own name.
Where you can rehearse each job today
CareerOn offers job simulations built for this industry: you take on a real assignment, make the decisions a practitioner makes, and see the consequences. We mapped every one of our semiconductor simulations to the profile in the survey that it actually exercises. Each simulation is matched to one profile at most. A partial fit is marked as partial. A profile we do not cover is printed as uncovered.
Every profile the survey names, how often experts sought it, and where to rehearse it
| Profile | Experts naming it as sought after | Rehearse it on CareerOn |
|---|---|---|
| Software engineers | 57% | None on CareerOn yet |
| Design engineers, system and digital | 52% | EDA physical design engineer; RISC-V processor design engineer; Silicon photonics engineer |
| Cybersecurity experts | 47% | None on CareerOn yet |
| Analog design engineers | 31% | None on CareerOn yet |
| Data and machine learning specialists | 42% | Partly: Yield and defect engineer; Metrology and process control engineer |
| Process engineers and technicians | between 24% and 33% | EUV lithography engineer; Process integration engineer; Yield and defect engineer; SOI substrate engineer; Metrology and process control engineer; Cleanroom engineer |
| Test and verification | 26% | Test and qualification engineer |
| Applications engineers | 20% | None on CareerOn yet |
Source 1 European Chips Skills Academy (DECISION Études & Conseil)
The map is not flattering, and we did not try to make it so. Our catalogue is strongest where the industry says hiring is easiest: process engineering, lithography, substrates, contamination control. It covers system and digital design through physical design, processor design and silicon photonics, and test through automotive qualification. Data and machine learning appear only inside other jobs, in metrology and in yield engineering.
And there are four gaps. We have no simulation for software engineers, the profile at the top of both of the survey’s lists. We have none for cybersecurity experts, none for analog designers and none for applications engineers. If one of those is your job, CareerOn cannot rehearse it with you today, and we would rather tell you that than send you to a simulation that only brushes against it.
Some of our simulations sit outside the survey’s list altogether: advanced packaging, MEMS sensors, intellectual property licensing and the programme director who runs a Chips Act portfolio. They are real jobs in the industry. The survey simply does not name them as profiles, so we do not claim a share for them.
Around Crolles, the ladder has a local shape
The same meeting in Crolles also heard figures from outside the company. We print them because they give the Grenoble valley a scale, and we print them with care, because they belong to one speaker and are relayed to us by the minutes of the meeting.
At the same meeting a speaker from Université Grenoble Alpes, Marc Oddon, said Isère counts 13,048 employees in electronic component manufacturing.
He also said 31,000 students in France are in a final year that can lead to electronics jobs, 3,350 of them in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
These are not ST’s figures and not an official count, and we do not combine them with the European estimate. Two numbers from two methods do not make a third.
Around Crolles, a university speaker counted 13,048 component workers in Isère
| What was counted | As relayed by the minutes of 9 Apr 2024 |
|---|---|
| Employees in electronic component manufacturing, Isère | 13,048 |
| Final-year students in France on tracks that can lead to electronics jobs | 31,000 |
| Of whom in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes | 3,350 |
Source 3 STMicroelectronics
The counter-case
The strongest objection to this piece is that a survey of practitioners measures what they feel short of, not what the market will pay for. Experts may name software engineers because software engineers are hard to hire in every industry, not only in chips. On that reading, the ranking tells you about the general labour market more than about semiconductors.
The objection is fair, and it is why we did not rely on the survey alone. The French contract, written for a different audience, names cybersecurity and embedded intelligence among the skills it seeks. ST’s own list of jobs puts design and development next to production. Neither document ranks profiles as the survey does, so they cannot confirm its order. What they confirm is its direction.
A second objection runs the other way: the report itself counts GlobalFoundries’ investment in Crolles among projects facing “postponement or cancellation”, so perhaps local demand is weaker than the ladder suggests. That is the consultancy’s reading, not the company’s, and we do not repeat it in our own voice. It is a reason to watch the local projects, not a reason to change the ranking of the jobs.
What would change the reading
Three things would make us reread this piece. A new edition of the Academy’s skills strategy, with a different ranking of the hardest profiles to fill. A published count of vacancies from a statistical office, which would let the estimate be tested against something measured. And a change to our own catalogue: when CareerOn adds a simulation for one of the four uncovered profiles, the map above changes with it, because it is computed from the catalogue rather than typed by hand.
We watch for all three. When one arrives, we will update the exhibit and record what changed.
What this means for your career
Start by finding your row in the map. If you come from process, materials or manufacturing, the industry wants you, and you can rehearse those jobs here today: lithography, process integration, substrates and cleanroom control. Know, though, that the survey calls those roles relatively less difficult to fill. The way to stand out is to bring the skill the report says is spreading into every profile: data. Our metrology and yield engineering simulations are where that meets the fab.
If you come from electronics or computer engineering, design is the scarce and rehearsable side. The physical design and processor design simulations put you in front of the decisions a design team makes under time and power budgets, and the silicon photonics simulation takes design out to the data centre.
If you come from software or security, the evidence says the industry needs you more than almost anyone, and we have nothing for you yet. We have told the CareerOn team exactly which simulations are missing. Until they exist, the most useful thing this piece can give you is the sentence to bring to an interview: that you know where your profile sits in the industry’s own ranking, and why.
Whatever your row, the ladder ST described runs from a vocational certificate to a doctorate. There is a place on it for most people who want one. The work is knowing which rung you are reaching for, and practising for that one.