AMD to hire 1,000 IT positions globally
Editor’s note:A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that AMD would increase its headcount by 10 percent. AMD is hiring 1,000 IT positions, but some of the openings are accounted for by attrition elsewhere in the company.
AMD is reportedly hiring more than 1,000 new IT positions in anticipation of growth it expects from the enterprise move to the cloud, the company told Dice today.
Most of the positions are for design engineers, software professionals and IT specialists at AMD facilities in California, Texas, Orlando, Boston and Canada, Lance Phillips, AMD's Global Talent Acquisition Lead, told Dice. Some of the positions will be in China, India and Taiwan, AMD told ZDNet.
AMD didn't elaborate on the strategy behind the hires other than the reference new hardware and software to support a move to the cloud. It is logical that they expect the explosion in data centers required for cloud computing is a chance to gain marketshare on rival Intel, assuming they can get the right products to market. Most of the positions will "help test, validate, find and correct errors," according to Dice. Software hires include:
- Design engineers with knowledge of computer architecture, C/C++
- Doftware engineers skilled in Linux development, C/C++, Ruby and Java
- OpenGL and OpenCL software developers who know C/C++ and graphics
- Firmware developers with experience in Linux using C/C++, Ruby, Java, and x86 assembly
Hardware hires include:
- Analog design engineers with backgrounds in electrical engineering and specific ClSI and ASIC design.
AMD employs more than 10,000 already, but the company runs like a startup, Phillips told Dice, and expects to hire those with a startup mentality.
The chipmaker faces an uphill climb in the market against Intel and has stumbled already. Earlier this year, AMD CEO Dirk Meyer stepped down. Meyer was popular internally after leading the company through a two-year turnaroun after several year's of weaker than expected product launches.
In February AMD began defending rumors that is was a takeover target, particularly by Dell.
AMD's core products face an uphill climb in the market against Intel notes ZDNet Asia blogger Edwin Yapp.
"AMD is an admirable engineering company but it is difficult to imagine it taking a leadership role in this transition," [said Christian Heidarson, Gartner's principal research analyst for semiconductors].
He noted that while Fusion introduced integrated graphic chipsets, a radical notion when AMD acquired ATI in 2006, its products did not reach the market before Intel offerings did.
AMD has some very interesting ambitions to take the CPU-GPU integration further than Intel, but it may be a question of "too late and in the wrong direction," the Gartner analyst said.
Regardless AMD is moving in the direction and making a significant investment in personnel to make it happen.
For more specifics on the positions and those already posted, see the original post on Dice.
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