Chinese consumer electronics creators Huawei is hiring highly trained engineers to develop semiconductor software at its hushed chipmaking arm, a field that is currently dominated by Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys, both American companies. 

This is the latest in a series of hiring sprees from the Chinese tech giant as they push to develop technologies they no longer have easy access to, thanks to a stranglehold from US sanctions. The company that manufactures the processors for Huawei smartphones, HiSilicon, have opened 50 roles in computing and manufacturing technologies, according to postings on the company’s WeChat account.

Among those roles, there are openings for developing chip design tools in-house, a product that the Chinese company can no longer source from Candence or Synopsys. Since the company was banned in 2019, after being viewed as a security threat by the Trump administration, Huawei has had to use outdated software and suboptimal local alternatives for their chipsets. 

One job description says that successful applicants would be responsible for creating and researching “advanced EDA technologies” while another unit at Huawei is looking for talent that will be able to achieve “breakthroughs” in core chip technologies. What isn’t clear, however, is how many people the company is hiring per role – if they need multiple people for one role or one person per role. 

Even after the Trump administration pushed Huawei out of the US market, despite the company’s protest that many jobs would be affected by the move, the current government has one a step further in tightening China’s ability to develop chip technology. It wasn’t just Huawei that faced the brunt of the ban on Chinese companies. In a 2021 order, 59 other firms, most of which had ties to the surveillance and/or military technology industries, were also banned. More recently, the US has been applying pressure on the Netherlands to ban ASML Holding from selling their tech to China