Intel Vietnam director urges young chip engineers to pursue expertise

Khanh joined Intel Products Vietnam, the U.S. company’s largest chip assembly and test facility globally, in 2010. Over the years, he rose to become engineering manager, product development manager, and project manager before leading factory engineering operations from 2020 to 2021 and eventually becoming the first Vietnamese director to head the plant.

Khanh speaks with VnExpress about his personal trajectory, the growth of the local engineering team at the facility, Intel's training culture, expectations for semiconductor talent, and how Vietnam can ascend the industry value chain.

Nguyen Quang Khanh, Genreral Factory Director at Intel Products Vietnam. Photo by Bao Lam

- How did you first enter the semiconductor industry, and what brought you to Intel?

- After graduating from the Hanoi University of Science and Technology, I worked for wafer fabrication companies in Japan and Taiwan, spending more than two years at a Sony manufacturing facility between 2007 and 2009. Back then, semiconductor manufacturing, especially equipment, processing, and the broader supply chain, was virtually nonexistent in Vietnam. When Intel committed to investing in Ho Chi Minh City's Saigon Hi-Tech Park in 2006, I was determined to take part in the country's landmark high-tech project.

To most Vietnamese at the time, Intel was simply the world's preeminent chipmaker, recognized everywhere through the ubiquitous "Intel Inside" stickers on personal computers and laptops. But their operations ran far deeper. I joined late in 2009 as a process engineer, just as the plant was getting off the ground.

Stepping into a newly opened factory where foreign managers led almost every technical team was disorienting, but I pushed myself to adapt quickly. I grew alongside the company through multiple roles—handling process and equipment engineering, managing technical departments, overseeing new product rollouts, and eventually heading factory operations. Between 2020 and 2021, I was honored to take the helm as the plant's first Vietnamese General Factory Director.

- What went through your mind when you stepped into that role?

- An immense sense of pride!

In the early years, our workers were remarkably young, largely fresh engineering graduates from top schools like the Hanoi University of Science and Technology and Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education. Everyone shared an intense drive to learn and a deep desire to prove what Vietnamese professionals could achieve in a high-tech setting.

Seeing a Vietnamese engineer appointed factory director marked an important milestone, but our greater triumph was cultivating a homegrown leadership team capable of running critical operations. That progress grew out of sheer grit, an empowering workplace, and a steady, patient handover of responsibilities.

Alongside that pride came a profound duty to keep developing our people, nurture a culture of innovation, and elevate manufacturing standards. Those efforts have enabled our local workforce not just to execute day-to-day operations seamlessly, but to pioneer creative solutions and carry meaningful weight across Intel's global network.

Today, the facility operates at a truly global scale in both volume and cutting-edge technical complexity, matching peer sites across Intel's worldwide assembly, packaging, and testing operations. The guiding vision we embraced from day one, "Create the future for Intel and Vietnam," has steadily become a reality.

From an era when engineers struggled with technical English to grasp unfamiliar technologies under an all-foreign management team, local staff now form the backbone of plant operations, engineering leadership, and management, while anchoring a flourishing broader semiconductor ecosystem across the country. Intel also works hand in hand with universities, helping revamp academic curricula so that classroom instruction reflects modern industrial realities.

- After moving from a hands-on technical specialist’s job into executive management, what proved to be your steepest learning curve?

- It demanded an entirely fresh set of skills. At peak operations, the facility employed 3,000 direct staff—including specialists, engineers, technicians, and managers and supported up to 5,000 workers when accounting for on-site partners and contractors.

A technical specialist lives and breathes the engineering details of a single project. But once you step into the director's office, strategic vision and overarching accountability take center stage. A leader must concentrate on team development, company culture, and inventive thinking, all while maintaining peak operational efficiency across Intel's global network of assembly and test plants.

- How did foreign executives mentor and guide the local team toward leadership?

- Intel maintains a distinctive workplace philosophy centered on people development to the point where employees frequently describe the company as a corporate university. Training programs spanning both technical mastery and professional communication follow rigorous international benchmarks.

In the beginning, overseas experts held every single leadership job. But they coached local staff and methodically transitioned responsibilities over time. Today, Vietnamese personnel hold more than 90% of the plant's senior management and key functional positions.

Pairing the hunger of young engineers with an empowering corporate environment accelerated our growth. You can trace that journey across four distinct milestones: learning the ropes, mastering operations, innovating independently, and taking the lead.

Between 2010 and 2016, our focus centered on absorbing know-how under the "Copy Exactly" model, faithfully replicating global procedures and specifications. The team dedicated itself to importing technology from sister facilities worldwide, executing flawless setups, and running stable assembly lines. That phase laid the vital groundwork for strict technical discipline and high-volume production capabilities.

From 2017 to 2021, we proved our mastery by taking on increasingly diverse and intricate chip architectures, going toe-to-toe with Intel operations in Malaysia, China, and North America.

Over the past three to five years, we have stepped into creative problem-solving and technical leadership: rather than simply running handed-down processes, Vietnamese engineers have tackled complex challenges across production quality, factory yield, automation, data analytics, and new product introductions.

Our overarching objective is to establish the facility as a global benchmark for product quality, operational metrics, output yields, and technology innovation, while eventually participating early in research and development to create high-value intellectual property straight out of Vietnam.

On the innovation front, Vietnamese engineers at the plant have registered more than 65 internal patents over the past five years, with filings held to the same standards as in the US. That track record makes our plant one of the most prolific patent contributors across Intel's entire global assembly and test network.

- What do you see as the greatest assets and strengths of young Vietnamese engineers?

- Vietnamese engineers bring vibrant energy, an appetite for learning, high ambition, and rigorous foundations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Past hurdles like English fluency and soft skills have largely disappeared. More impressively, younger staff pick up emerging technologies and innovate with remarkable speed, actively adopting generative artificial intelligence and data science tools to sharpen workplace efficiency and tackle complex assignments.

Even so, they need to keep honing teamwork, systems thinking, and the confidence to voice technical judgments during high-stakes discussions. The semiconductor field demands patient, long-term dedication. Reaching the caliber of a master specialist capable of untangling the hardest technical bottlenecks can take decades of focused effort.

Yet logging hours on the job will not by itself turn someone into an expert; real mastery hinges on whether an engineer tackles sufficiently demanding assignments, learns under seasoned mentors, rotates through vital functional posts, and gains real chances to leave an imprint. For that reason, personal grit must be coupled with corporate commitment: companies need structured career paths that connect skills frameworks, hands-on mentorship, high-impact projects, and evidence-based performance evaluations. Professional depth takes time, but you cannot simply sit back and wait for the clock to tick.

- What guidance will you offer young engineers hoping to break into the semiconductor industry?

- Academic degrees get your foot in the door, but how far you travel depends on continuous learning and the grit to drill deep into a specialized discipline.

Seek out demanding technical problems, pursue accomplished mentors, and raise your hand for projects that stretch your limits.

Never get caught up chasing empty job titles, and focus instead on building real capabilities that deliver concrete value to your organization and the wider industry.

The moment your ambition stalls, career momentum vanishes.

Vietnam's semiconductor landscape offers unprecedented openings today alongside multinational players like Intel, Amkor, Qualcomm, Samsung, and Marvell. Seizing those openings ultimately comes down to your personal passion, drive, and resilience.

- How has Vietnam's semiconductor ecosystem evolved since Intel first broke ground?

- When Intel first arrived, observers labeled our facility a generic high-tech project because the term "semiconductors" had little resonance locally. After a decade spent laying foundational infrastructure, Vietnam's chip sector has transformed dramatically, drawing major industry leaders across integrated circuit design such as Marvell, Qualcomm, and Renesas as well as advanced packaging and manufacturing giants like Intel, Amkor, Samsung, and LG.

Intel Products Vietnam recently crossed the four-billion-unit shipping mark, assembling and testing flagship server and PC processors such as the Core Ultra Series 3 manufactured on the Intel 18A process node.

We have also woven artificial intelligence into our core operational roadmap, deploying machine learning algorithms across quality control, predictive tool maintenance, data modeling, and factory automation, all while safeguarding corporate secrets and intellectual property.

AI does far more than fuel chip demand; it fundamentally reshapes how processors are engineered, packaged, and manufactured, unlocking prime opportunities for Vietnam to develop advanced packaging expertise and pursue higher-value manufacturing research.

- What profile should Vietnam seek in a "chief architect" to steer its national semiconductor roadmap?

- Leading this effort demands deep domain knowledge paired with decades of hands-on experience in navigating the global semiconductor industry.

Semiconductors represent an intricately interconnected ecosystem where no single country controls every manufacturing tier: the United States leads in chip design, Japan dominates raw materials and specialized fabrication equipment, while Taiwan and South Korea excel in front-end wafer fabrication. A national chief architect needs an overarching view of this global puzzle along with clear authority matching their responsibilities to coordinate across government ministries and commercial enterprises.

Flawless execution matters above all, because execution forms an inseparable part of strategy. A master plan only delivers value when translated into hard, measurable milestones: like the number of university curricula tied directly to commercial tools and field problems, the tally of engineers attaining elite technical standards, the volume of local suppliers upgraded to global tiers, the commercial impact of domestic R&D initiatives, and how much complex, high-margin manufacturing Vietnam successfully claims across the global value chain.