GlobalFoundries: With chip fab, opportunities aren’t limited to the techies

GlobalFoundries is searching for software designers, engineers, a human resources manager and a security chief.

That’s a small sample of the 60-plus new jobs GlobalFoundries has advertised in the past four months. The spin off of California-based Advanced Micro Devices is assembling a work force to run the $4.2 billion computer chip fabrication plant it’s building in Saratoga County.

Considered one of the largest economic development projects in New York history, the foundry is expected to employ up to 1,400 within four years.

The company already has hired 25 top managers, compiling an annual payroll of $1.5 million, more than two years before the plant is ready for production.

The project is creating job opportunities for everyone from clerical workers and database managers to a senior-level patent attorney and a security manager.

“We don’t lack applicants but we are being very selective,” said Eric Choh, vice president of operations. Choh was hired in March after 16 years at AMD working on similar projects in Texas and Germany.

Executives are picking applicants based on skills, experience and in some cases their home address.

For employees with expertise in the computer chip industry, GlobalFoundries has looked outside the area, hiring senior-level workers from Virginia, Texas and California, said Norm Armour, vice president and general manager of the Malta site.

But the company also is committed to hiring local employees. The directors of human resources, finance and government relations all have lived and worked in the area.

“There are a lot of positions, such as the human resources folks, who don’t need as much of a technical background,” Armour said.

Still, many of the highly specialized jobs—software managers, database developers and supply chain managers­—offer relocation cost reimbursement, according to listings on careerbuilder.com. GlobalFoundries also posts jobs and accepts applications on its own Web site.

By this time next year, the company is expected to employ 250 to 300, not including construction workers. In four years, when the number employees reaches 1,400, payroll will hit $88 million a year.

“During busy weeks we might be interviewing 15 to 20 people,” Armour said.

One of the key employees involved in the process is Human Resources Director Emily Reilly, a former GE Energy staffer, who was hired in March.

She is working with GlobalFoundries internal recruiters, contract recruiters and other senior management to sort through applications, Armour said.

Nearly two-thirds of GlobalFoundries employees will be wafer fab techs. That’s where Hudson Valley Community College is expected to help.

The Troy school introduced a semiconductor manufacturing technician program in 2005, anticipating that a chip fab could be coming to the region.

Hudson Valley also is building its new $15 million Tec-Smart campus less than a mile away from the GlobalFoundries fab. The school started construction on the campus last year in an effort to work closely with the company to ensure that students have the right skills to win jobs. The campus will train 300 to 500 technicians in the next three to five years to work at the plant and for other companies.

Joe Sarubbi, a professor and executive director of Tec-Smart, has said the college wants GlobalFoundries and support companies to view the school as the primary source for manufacturing workers.

The quest to find skilled labor at GlobalFoundries will mirror many of the practices that Armour used when working on a similar project for another company 10 years ago. The computer chip fab was in Oregon. And the company was LSI Logic.

Armour and LSI worked closely with community colleges and four-year schools to develop programs to ensure there was a supply of technicians and engineers available to run the chip plant.

Here, Armour said GlobalFoundries is working with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University at Albany and Hudson Valley Community College. He also plans to work with Clarkson University in northern New York and Rochester Institute of Technology in the western part of the state to train engineers.

“We need to hit the floor running,” Armour said.