Apple has posted several job listings for engineers in the San Diego area, Bloomberg reports, as part of what appears to be an aggressive move to draw talent to its own chip design team and away from rival Qualcomm, which has its U.S. operations based in that city.
This marks the first time Apple has publicly recruited for these types of roles in the Southern California area, although as the report notes the company has a history of setting up chip design facilities in other areas where rivals such as Intel and AMD have bases of operations, ranging from Portland, Austin, and Orlando to sites in Israel, Germany, Taiwan, and Japan, allowing it to draw on existing bases of engineering talent by poaching from rival companies in those areas.
The new job listings cover a variety of chip designs, ranging from Apple’s Neural Engine to seeking wireless technology experts, the latter of which suggests that Apple is making a stronger push into developing its own end-to-end wireless system for the iPhone, which currently still relies on a range of chips from Intel and Broadcom, and, until recently, Qualcomm.
Apple has dipped its toes into wireless chip designs with the W1 and W2 chips for the AirPods and Apple Watch, but has yet to design its own LTE and Wi-Fi chipsets.
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