A view of Samsung Electronics’ Seocho office building in Seocho-gu, Seoul. News1
Samsung Electronics is recruiting experienced personnel across all areas of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), from design to packaging, reliability testing, and customer technical support. After successively succeeding this year in mass-producing HBM4 (sixth generation) and supplying HBM4E (seventh generation) samples, the company has also unveiled next-generation HBM5 (eighth generation) technology. The recruitment is seen as a strategy to secure specialized personnel to simultaneously accelerate product development and customer certification.
Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) said it will recruit for six HBM-related roles in its mid-career hiring drive running from the 13th to the 27th of this month. The HBM-related personnel sought by the Memory Business Division cover five roles: HBM core die design, HBM base die design, HBM reliability testing, HBM package development, and HBM application engineering. The Semiconductor Research Center is also separately recruiting personnel for next-generation HBM package process development.
The scope of recruitment encompasses the entire HBM product development process. Core (memory) die design personnel design the analog and digital circuits and power delivery networks of the DRAM dies that make up HBM. Base (logic) die design personnel handle the physical design and timing optimization of the logic (computing) die that controls data transmission between HBM and graphics processing units (GPUs) and artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators.
HBM reliability testing and package development personnel verify the lifespan and thermal stability of multi-stacked DRAM and optimize bump, through-silicon via (TSV), and bonding processes. Application engineers evaluate completed HBM in AI accelerator systems and respond to technical certification from major customers. In effect, the company is simultaneously expanding not only development personnel who improve product performance but also back-end, quality, and technical support personnel who determine mass-production feasibility and customer adoption.
Samsung Electronics has been accelerating the pace of its next-generation HBM product launches this year. In February, it began shipping mass-produced HBM4 for the first time in the industry. In May, it supplied samples of its next product, HBM4E, to customers, accelerating the development of follow-on products as well. The strategy is to shorten the generational transition cycle by conducting HBM4E customer verification in parallel with HBM4 mass production. At “Computex 2026,” held last month in Taipei, Taiwan, the company also unveiled an HBM5 model along with “Heat Path Block (HPB),” a new thermal management technology.
Large-Scale HBM Hiring, Targeting ‘Custom HBM’
On the 13th, Samsung Electronics’ Device Solutions (DS) division announced through a job posting that it would recruit personnel for high-bandwidth memory (HBM)-related positions. The application deadline is the 27th of this month. Samsung Electronics
This recruitment is expected to directly contribute to turning Samsung Electronics’ HBM roadmap into actual products. First, core die design personnel will play a role in improving the operating speed and power efficiency of the next-generation DRAM to be applied in HBM4E and HBM5. This is because increasing transmission speed while lowering voltage and power consumption requires optimizing analog circuits, signal integrity, and power delivery networks together.
Base die design personnel are linked to the competitiveness of custom HBM. Since HBM4, the role of the base die has expanded from simple signal relaying to data management and computing support, making design capabilities tailored to the requirements of each AI accelerator company more important. Because Samsung Electronics operates both memory and foundry businesses, it can jointly optimize the core die and the logic base die it produces in-house.
Package and reliability personnel will play a role in solving the increased stacking count and heat issues of HBM4E and HBM5. The package process development role recruited by the Semiconductor Research Center includes multi-stage hybrid copper bonding, TSV modules, and HBM copper pad planarization process development. This is analyzed as a move to lower the thickness and thermal resistance of high-stack products by jointly advancing hybrid bonding, which can reduce the bonding gap compared to conventional thermal compression bonding, along with the Heat Path Block.
The recruitment of application engineers is focused on shortening the customer certification period. Even after HBM product development is complete, it must pass system evaluation combined with GPUs and AI accelerators, as well as customer quality verification, before leading to actual supply.
“HBM is not a product whose competitiveness is determined by DRAM performance alone; it requires the base die, stacking and bonding, heat management, and customer certification capabilities to all mesh together,” an industry official said. “Samsung Electronics simultaneously recruiting personnel for every stage of HBM development can be seen as a measure to expand HBM4 mass production and develop HBM4E and HBM5 in parallel.”