Semiconductor recruitment
across the UK.

Design and manufacturing, both covered

The UK semiconductor sector is made up of two communities that hire in different ways. Chip design teams sit mainly around Bristol, Cambridge and Oxford, with further groups in Swindon, and they look for engineers who can carry a block from architecture to tape-out. Manufacturing is concentrated in Cardiff and South Wales, where the work is about yield and about getting a process to behave at volume.

Our semiconductor recruitment UK practice covers both, and it starts with knowing which community a candidate belongs to before anyone picks up the phone. Joel Drapkin founded Tacit Search in 2026 after some twenty years in the sector, and the relationships behind the firm were built over that time, one programme at a time.

A typical search

A fabless company in the South West was approaching its first tape-out and needed a physical design lead. The role had been advertised for months through a general technology agency. What came back was a run of software-adjacent CVs and two candidates who had only worked on much older nodes. The hiring manager was spending his evenings screening people who could not discuss clock tree synthesis, and the tape-out date had not moved.

We began by asking him what the lead would own in the first year and which verification and architecture colleagues they would depend on. From that we drew up a list of named engineers at design houses and larger vendors within reach of the site, and Joel spoke to each one directly. Most were settled where they were. One had just seen her programme cancelled at board level and was quietly open to a conversation.

She met the founders, asked sharper questions about the schedule than anyone on the original shortlist had, and accepted. She reviewed the floorplan before the schedule tightened, and the company took the advert down the week she signed.

Where we work

Our reach is UK-wide and extends to some international searches, but the centre of gravity is clear. Cardiff and South Wales carry the manufacturing base, Bristol and the South West carry much of the chip design, and Oxford, Cambridge and Swindon add their own specialist teams. We take on retained and contingent permanent searches as well as contract and interim cover, and we agree the route with the client at the start of each engagement.