Engineers are chasing ₹30 lakh offers—but not from startups

During this placement season, demand at the younger Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs) has focused on students with an aptitude in chip design, advanced communications like 5G and 6G, and quantum computing. This surge provides a crucial buffer for the colleges amid a generally weak job market, at a time when many Indian corporations are cutting back on campus recruitment.

Mint spoke to Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, as well as the campus placement teams of IIT-Patna, Dharwad, Bhubaneswar, Gandhinagar and NITs in Jamshedpur, Surat and Raipur. The placement executives broadly agreed that interest in semiconductor roles has increased compared to previous years.

While the older, first-generation IITs including IIT Kharagpur, IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur and IIT Delhi will begin their campus placement sessions on 1 December, many other engineering colleges start early, and are increasingly relying on pre-placement offers extended after successful internships.

Lenovo, Tata, Dell

Placement officials confirm that a cluster of firms, including Dell Technologies, Lenovo Group, and Tata Electronics, have joined the fray alongside the large global chipmakers. At several institutions, Intel and Nvidia have offered some students compensation packages well above the campus median, ranging from ₹15 lakh to high-end profiles commanding ₹30-35 lakh.

Applied Materials India chief operating officer Radhika Vishwanathan noted a “growing interest among students in deep tech and semiconductor-related roles,” reflecting the sector’s escalating prominence. The company, a top global supplier of equipment, services, and software for chips, is seeking students with specializations across mechanical, electrical, mechatronics and material science for its 2026 batch. It hires from the IITs, NIITs and other colleges.

Tata Electronics has approached multiple institutions for chip talent, placement executives said. The company is looking to establish a comprehensive semiconductor ecosystem in India by building the country’s first major commercial chip fab unit in Gujarat in partnership with PSMC, and an Assembly, Testing, Marking, and Packaging facility in Assam.

Electronics focus

Hiring in electronics has surged while IT has slowed, said V. Ramgopal Rao, vice-chancellor at BITS, Pilani. Qualcomm, Micron, Nvidia, Texas Instruments, Sandisk, NXP, Marvell, Cadence Design, ARM and AMD have visited BITS for so-called very large-scale integration or VLSI roles covering chip design, verification, and physical implementation, Rao said.

“New firms like Skyworks, Cyient semiconductors and Lat Aerospace were notable names visiting this cycle. MediaTek offered roles for Taiwan at Pilani campus, along with domestic roles for other campuses.”

At BITS, this year, out of 1,143 students, 549 have received full-time offers through campus placements. Summer internships accounted for 48.03% in placements. The median salary this year is around ₹31 lakh so far.

Last year (for the batch of 2025), BITS had strong hiring momentum from semiconductor companies due to India’s Semiconductor Mission. Micron, for example, recruited 51 students compared to 23-24 the year before, offering compensation packages in the ₹30 lakh-plus range. “Overall, semiconductor and allied firms placed over 200 students, with salaries seeing a 6–6.5% increase from the batch of 2024. Key recruiters included Micron, Qualcomm, Marvell Semiconductors, and other electronics design companies, reflecting the sector’s growing demand for highly skilled talent in chip design, microelectronics, and related fields,” Rao added.

Early hiring

Student placement coordinator at one of the NITs mentioned above drew a parallel with the previous year’s placement wherein semiconductor firms hired late in December and January. “This year, companies like Nvidia, Arm and Intel that had semiconductor-related profiles, requested an earlier slot and offered compensation around ₹30-35 lakh”. Nvidia also signed up for hiring in Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology in Surat.

Nvidia, Dell, Intel, Arm, Lenovo, Tata Electronics and the IITs including Ropar, Patna, Gandhinagar, Palakkad, Bhilai, Jammu, Goa, Jodhpur, Hyderabad, Bhubaneswar, Tirupati, Indore and Dharwad and NIITs mentioned above did not respond to Mint’s queries.

The hiring urgency underscores a rapid shift in India’s semiconductor landscape. The sector employed 120,000 engineers in 2024, a figure forecast to nearly double to 275,000 by 2030, according to Ashok Chandak, president of SEMI India that organizes Semicon India, and also the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association. “The companies need engineers who are trained in AI, internet of things (IoT), quantum computing as work has evolved from testing chipsets to designing them. Hence, they are hiring from the IITs and the NIITs”.

State backing

This aggressive talent acquisition is accelerated by significant government backing. The ₹76,000 crore Semicon India Programme, launched in 2021, provides production-linked incentives (PLIs) to attract major global investments by offering a fiscal support of up to 50% of the project cost for establishing advanced semiconductor fab, display fab, and assembly, testing, marking, and packaging (ATMP) facilities. The ₹1,000 crore design-linked incentive (DLI) scheme aims to boost domestic chip design by providing financial and infrastructure support.

While the older, first-generation IITs will begin their main placement sessions on 1 December, many engineering colleges start early, and are increasingly relying on pre-placement offers extended after successful internships. The hiring drive for the 2026 batch is proceeding even as global factors—from geopolitical conflicts to new US H-1B visa rules—create uncertainty in broader campus hiring patterns.