Semiconductor GCC Multi-City Topology Director

The mandate

The group has approval for an India semiconductor GCC but competing sponsors propose duplicating design, verification and product engineering in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Talent counts dominate the discussion while laboratory access, design data, tool licences, time-zone interfaces and product authority remain unresolved. The defined problem is to create a two-city topology whose capability logic survives hiring pressure and local advocacy.

The named deliverable is a Semiconductor GCC Multi-City Topology and Operating Blueprint. It must allocate capability domains, labs, tools and leadership; map parent and India decisions; define shared and site-specific platforms, resilience, mobility, vendor use, talent pipelines, cost and staged investment; and provide a tested launch sequence for three product work packages.

Four milestones govern four months: by week two, accept capability and constraint evidence; by week seven, deliver site and talent findings; by week twelve, test topology choices through product, lab-loss and hiring scenarios; and by week seventeen, submit the blueprint, investment case and launch roadmap. Each invoice follows acceptance of its milestone.

The engineering officer and investment panel will accept the work only when every capability has a documented location rationale, critical product decisions have one owner, laboratory and tool dependencies are deliverable, site loss has a defined operating response, scarce leaders are not duplicated cosmetically, economics include cross-site friction, and client teams can place a new work package unaided.

The client will provide product roadmaps, role and talent data, lab requirements, tool agreements, security boundaries, supplier contracts, cost assumptions, candidate sites and access to global and India leaders. The consultant will not lease premises, recruit employees, negotiate incentives, choose suppliers or execute launch; uncertain talent and infrastructure evidence remains explicit.

Why this is external work

Each sponsor favours the location where its existing relationships and teams are strongest. Internal analysis therefore converts political preferences into capability labels without testing the operational seams. An independent semiconductor GCC architect is needed to ground topology in product work, labs, authority and resilience before two sites create duplicated leadership and permanent coordination tax.

What you will own

• Classify architecture, design, verification, validation, product, test and platform capabilities by workflow and scarce dependency.
• Map laboratory, data, tool, supplier, security, time-zone and product-decision constraints for each capability.
• Compare single-site, hub-and-spoke and specialised twin-site topologies under growth, attrition and site-loss scenarios.
• Allocate leadership and product authority without duplicating senior titles or fragmenting complete work packages.
• Model fully burdened cost including tools, labs, travel, coordination, vendor support, mobility and resilience.
• Define launch gates for facilities, access, leaders, toolchain, work-package acceptance and source-team exit.
• Deliver the topology, three package placements, scenario evidence, investment case and unresolved sponsor choices.

Candidate qualifications

• Designed multi-city semiconductor engineering centres around actual product, laboratory, EDA-tool and secure-data constraints.
• Allocated complete silicon work packages across architecture, front-end design, verification, validation and product engineering interfaces.
• Built location economics covering scarce skills, licence concurrency, laboratories, coordination latency, mobility and resilience rather than salaries alone.
• Prevented duplicated vice-presidents and fragmented tape-out authority during politically contested site and capability choices.
• Tested proposed topology against site loss, verification-hiring underdelivery, laboratory delay and an accelerated product schedule before investment approval.
• Delivered a placement calculus that client leaders reused for later semiconductor capabilities without continued consultant interpretation.

Non-negotiables

• Can complete both India site residencies and all Singapore panel reviews within four months.
• Will disclose relationships with semiconductor firms, location advisers, developers, vendors and governments.
• Brings semiconductor GCC topology design; generic site selection or talent-market research alone is insufficient.
• Accepts client-run work-package placement and reproducible economics as final acceptance conditions.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe a semiconductor capability you deliberately kept in one city despite attractive talent in another.
2. 49 words maximum. Which dependency most often invalidates a salary-led semiconductor GCC location case?
3. 49 words maximum. How would you test whether a two-city topology provides resilience rather than duplicated cost?