Apple Hires at Least a Dozen Former AMD Employees for an 'Orlando GPU Team', Still Hiring More

Apple has hired at least a dozen former AMD graphics engineers for its Orlando offices in recent months, according to a MacRumors review of employees' LinkedIn profiles.

The majority of hires, which include a graphics architect, hardware engineer and others, occurred in January of this year.

AMD laid off a number of employees last year in a corporate reorganization, and fired more in January. It seems likely that Apple hired a number of the laid off Orlando AMD engineers for a new team it's building in the region.

The company has also posted new job listings for Site Managers to head GPU teams in both Orlando and Cupertino.

These hires and new listings are in addition to job listings posted last month for chip engineers for its Orlando Design Center.

Site Manager

Job Number: 27994768 - Orlando, Florida, United States

Job Summary

Manager will be responsible for leading the Orlando GPU team to deliver high quality IP to specification and on schedule.

Key Qualifications

- 10+ years proven experience leading high performance GFX (or equivalent complexity) IP development teams
- 5+ years proven experience building/hiring medium/large (30+) complex ASIC IP development teams
- Excellent personnel management, mentoring, team building and hiring abilities
- Proven ability to manage parallel project efforts including effective resource/schedule planning & tracking
- Excellent written/verbal communication and project management skills
- Experience with GFX Architecture/Design, GFX APIs and overall GFX development is a significant plus
- Ability to work well in a cross-site team and be productive under aggressive schedules

The new job listings ask for extensive experience in building and leading teams, including hiring, mentoring, and more. They also focus on intellectual property development as well. The listings in both Cupertino and Orlando are identical.

Apple's interest in GPUs (Graphics Processing Unit) and CPUs coincides with an effort to develop more of its technology in house. Apple is a licensee for ARM and Imagination Technology, which power the company's iPhones and iPads.