AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電), the world’s No. 4 LCD maker, plans to recruit 3,000 engineers this year to expand its display and solar technology work force, the company said on Thursday.
The new recruits will be responsible for research, manufacturing, marketing and sales of AUO display and solar products, supporting the company’s work on low-carbon display technology like organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs, and electronic paper, it said in an e-mail.
“Part of the work force will be assigned to run our company’s new operating bases or joint ventures overseas, particularly in China, eastern Europe and Brazil,” AUO marketing manager Freda Lee (李秀芬) said by telephone.
AUO set up two manufacturing facilities with more than 1,000 employees each in the Czech Republic and Slovakia last year. It also formed joint ventures with Hong Kong’s TPV Technology Ltd (冠捷科技), the world’s largest contract monitor maker, to assemble LCD TV modules in Poland and Brazil, Lee said.
In January, AUO announced another recruitment drive for the Aurora Project, a collaboration with international academic institutes and corporations to bring more than 200 staff from other countries to conduct research on green power technologies.
Those researchers will work in AUO’s second research center in Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區). The center will eventually house 2,000 engineers and focus primarily on foundational research for medium and long-term technologies in green power and displays.
Last year, AUO hired 2,500 engineers for its operations.
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