CoAsia Semi trained chip designers when Vietnam could not hire enough

Vietnam's semiconductor push was constrained by talent as much as by capital. At CoAsia Semi's Hanoi branch, lead engineer Nguyen Thanh Yen had recruited only 70 chip-design engineers over three years against a target of 300. Few chip courses, low student awareness, and brain drain made experienced-hire recruiting a dead end.

Yen persuaded CoAsia Semi to let him create a course for engineering students and coach chip designers into existence. The decision changed the branch's response from searching for scarce finished specialists to building its own pipeline; by 2023, Yen said he was proud of the team he had built.

That company-level move sat inside a wider Vietnamese response: Hanoi University of Science and Technology opened the country's first undergraduate program in semiconductor fabrication and design, with 89 students in its first intake.

Yen recruited 70 chip-design engineers in three years and built a training program rather than relying on 300 experienced hires.

Vietnam had about 5,000 hardware engineers for a chip sector expected to need nearly ten times as many over the next decade.

CoAsia Semi's Hanoi branch could recruit only 70 chip-design engineers in three years against a target of 300.

Few chipmaking courses and low student awareness made conventional experienced-hire recruiting too slow.

When a technical market lacks finished specialists, convert hiring into a training pipeline: the company can build the capability that the labor market cannot supply.

The training program did not immediately close Vietnam's talent gap, but it gave CoAsia Semi a repeatable way to grow a local design team. The wider ecosystem also began adding capacity: HUST's first semiconductor degree started with 89 students, while a new U.S.-Vietnam partnership committed $2 million to teaching labs and training courses. The result is an incremental capability-building win, not proof that Vietnam had already become a chipmaking hub.