How a US Semiconductor Enterprise Built an Offshore Development Center in India

50: India engineers employed
10 months: To a full R&D centre
100%: Statutory compliance handled

The challenge

Employing Specialist Chip-Design Engineers Without a Long Entity Build

This US semiconductor company wanted a long-term engineering base in India for chip-design software and verification work. The talent question settled itself quickly: India had the depth of specialist engineers it needed, more than it could reliably hire at home. The open question was how to employ fifty of them without either a year of incorporation first or a setup it would later regret.

A business whose whole value is its intellectual property does not staff core R&D on loose contracts. The engineers had to be directly employed, on compliant terms with real benefits, with IP ownership clean from day one. And the company wanted the centre running on its roadmap's timeline, not its lawyers'.

The brief, then: a permanent engineering centre in India, held to the same standard as every other team, and built fast.

The solution

Standing Up a Directly Employed Engineering Centre in India

Wisemonk recruited the chip-design and verification engineers and employed them in India as Employer of Record, so the development centre was live and compliant while its longer-term structure was still being set up. Hiring did not have to wait on paperwork.

Every engineer joined on a compliant Indian contract, with provident fund, professional tax, TDS, gratuity and health benefits from the first cycle, and pay benchmarked to India's competitive market for semiconductor talent. Onboarding, equipment and IP assignment were sorted up front, which is no small detail for a company whose crown jewels are its designs.

The company owned the engineering and the hiring bar. Wisemonk owned recruitment, employment and compliance, through one point of contact, and the centre hit fifty engineers in ten months.

The results

A 50-Engineer R&D Centre, Live in Ten Months

The company built a 50-engineer offshore development centre in India in ten months, employed to the standard a semiconductor business has to hold, with 100% of statutory obligations handled.

The engineers sit on compliant contracts with real benefits and clean IP assignment, so a core part of R&D runs in India without the exposure that informal arrangements carry.

With the centre proven, the company keeps growing its India engineering bench the same way, and the development centre is now simply part of how it ships silicon.

We wanted a long-term engineering centre in India, not contractors, because our designs are the business. Wisemonk employed fifty specialist engineers for us on compliant contracts with clean IP assignment, and had the centre running far sooner than an entity build would have.

— VP of Hardware Engineering, US semiconductor company