TSMC’s Arizona internships surge as chipmaker races to fill thousands of high-tech jobs

As a summer intern at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Jacob Wintermute swapped the classroom for the cleanroom, gaining valuable engineering experience at the chipmaker’s north Phoenix fab site.

During the 11-week internship program, Wintermute — who graduated in the spring from Arizona State University with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering — learned about hardware and processes at TSMC’s high-tech fab, and worked with the company’s vendors.

He also developed a software application to track parts used in TSMC’s tools — an innovation that could help technicians streamline maintenance and avoid downtime. TSMC evaluates the most promising projects developed by interns for potential use at its manufacturing campus, and Wintermute’s innovation has been incorporated into a larger ongoing company project.

“It has been a great experience. There’s not a day that goes by where I didn’t pick up something new,” said Wintermute, who returned to ASU this fall to pursue a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. “It’s such an exciting time to be in the semiconductor industry, especially with all the investment that the company is putting into this plant.”

TSMC is rapidly expanding its internship program in Arizona, where the company is racing to meet workforce demands consisting of thousands of jobs tied to its $165 billion investment in its advanced semiconductor fab site.

During the summer, TSMC hosted 200 interns from 60 colleges and universities nationwide, including some 30 students from ASU. That number is nearly double the 130 student interns the company hosted last year. It’s also a significant increase from the 16 interns who participated in TSMC’s internship pilot program in 2023.

“So you can see that we’re really scaling up and we would like to have even more (interns) because we do want to have this experience for as many graduates and universities as possible,” said Rose Castanares, president of TSMC Arizona. “We want to make sure that we can grow it, but still keep a very close relationship with the students, so they feel supported and have a really good experience here with us.”

As part of the program, interns are paired with a full-time employee who helps them navigate the transition from academia to the fast-paced lab environment.

Wintermute was paired with Taylor Gowdy, an ASU graduate who joined TSMC as a mechanical engineer last year.

“This is such a unique and special opportunity to be studying engineering in the same city that something like this is being built,” Gowdy said. “I don’t think I fully realized that until I started here, met my coworkers and saw that people are moving from all over the world to work here. It’s a very special opportunity for current students to have the ability to have an internship or start a career in such a large industry that’s just in their backyard.”

TSMC received thousands of applications for its 200 internship slots this year. Most internships are engineering-related, although some support the company’s legal and human resources departments.

TSMC’s summer internship program wrapped on Aug. 29 and the process to review and determine job offers is underway. TSMC did not disclose how many job offers it plans to extend to this year’s summer interns. For context, TSMC extended job offers to nearly 100 interns last year, Castanares said.

From TSMC intern to engineer

Jack Meehan was among TSMC’s cohort of interns in 2024. He’s now working as a full-time engineer at the company’s north Phoenix fab after graduating from UC Berkeley.

During his internship, Meehan spearheaded a project to optimize material handling in TSMC’s Arizona fabs. His current role with the company involves data analysis to improve operations.

“Career-wise, I get to wear a lot of different hats. There’s data analysis. There’s procurement. You have to be a little bit of a project manager in my group, as we’re coordinating installation of tools or verifying that they’re working. Then, once they’re ramped up, we’re optimizing. We also have to do repairs,” he said. “I never feel like I’m doing just one thing. I’m constantly learning and building experience, and that’s really appealing too.

TSMC focuses its student intern recruitment efforts at dozens of “target schools” with semiconductor programs tailored to the industry and alumni who have joined the company. Some of those universities include ASU, Texas A&M, University of Illinois Urbana Champagne, University of Michigan, Purdue, Georgia Tech and UC Berkeley, among others.

TSMC looks for students who are proactive and resourceful with strong communication and problem-solving skills, Castanares said.

“At TSMC, we are all interconnected. We’re all one team, including with our customers, and so that sense of teamwork and collaboration is really important,” Castanares said.

Looking ahead, TSMC is already recruiting its next cohort of interns for summer 2026, Castanares added.

“I would hope that we can continue to show people that semiconductors is a great industry and it’s impactful to the next generation because this type of product can help with so many different applications and people’s lives,” she said. “We talk about AI a lot and TSMC Arizona is building AI chips that will go into systems that can help create the next cancer drug, gaming station or data centers to help with ChatGPT and all kinds of different applications.”