We Are NXP | NXP India Mentorship Program to Inspire Engineers

NXP has 9,000 engineers worldwide, with 2,500 of them in India at our four Research and Development (R&D) sites in Noida, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune. 90% of our Indian colleagues are engineers, 70-80% of whom are are junior in their positions and would benefit most from the mentorship program. Sanjay Gupta, Vice President (VP) and India Country Manager, is dedicated to nurturing their talents and help them reach their fullest potential.

Therefore, he and his leadership Team, consisting of HR as well as R&D, in close collaboration with the Global Chief Technology Offce (CTO) Team, have created a new Mentorship Program. Its aim is to fast-track the best engineers towards the ultimate goal of becoming a distinguished NXP technical leader. We spoke with Sanjay to learn more.

NXP: Sanjay, How has the role of your engineers changed?

Sanjay Gupta: In the past few years, the India team has re-aligned itself from pure execution to true innovation. Last year, we were one of the company’s highest contributor of new patent ideas. Over the last couple of years, we have unveiled “Patent Walls” at each site to celebrate the large number of patents we have been granted.

NXP: How does the mentorship program work and how was it formed?

SG: First, back in 2017, we created the NXP India Technical Talent Development Framework. This has five Innovation pillars - Tech Innovation, Tech Streams, Tech Research, Tech Fusion and Tech Startup - which help us to identify the talent ready to be trained for the next level of growth. The Mentorship Program is the next step in this direction, made possible with the great support of our CTO Lars Reger, and excellent cooperation from the CTO office. We are also supported by India’s R&D and HR leadership team, who helped us to identify, funnel and steer engineers into unique functional categories.

NXP: How do you intend to go forward?

SG: The plan is that every year we identify a new group of 30 people who are already performing well on our Innovation pillars while achieving their business deliverables. The people selected will be paired with a global technical expert, a member of the global Technical Leadership Team (TLT), for a year of mentorship.

NXP: What do the innovation pillars represent and how do they help engineers?

SG: Through the five Innovation pillars, engineers learn how to write patents and publications, which is an essential part of sharing and protecting knowledge. They learn the value of cross-collaboration with their local and global peers, of internal and external university research, how to bring together hardware and software in customer use-cases and practical applications, system solutions and challenges. And finally, with last year’s Tech start-up pillar, they can learn about agile outside innovation from start-ups, nurturing incubators, strategic alliances, how external inputs can help teach us to innovate.

NXP: What are the program’s ultimate goals?

SG: The goal is to develop distinguished technical leaders through a structured development program to maximize learning opportunities and prioritize personalized developmental needs under the continuous guidance of our approximately 100 global experts. Our goal is to gradually increase this with top technical leaders and future Fellows from India.

NXP: How does the program benefit NXP?

SG: The mentorship program gives engineers a clear pathway for career progression, with strong support from their peers, from their technical role models. For NXP, it increases the level of innovation inside our company, it nurtures the talent we have, and it helps improve retention, inspiring loyalty, because when people feel engaged and supported, they are more inclined to stay near the source of that support. So, NXP keeps this knowledge and skill, which is of course invaluable. I hope this will be very successful.

We Are NXP embodies, spirit and values of NXP, which is committed to advancing the world by making it safer and more connected. We pursue our ambitions through technological innovations designed to enhance the quality of life of our employees, our communities and the world at large, all the while ensuring sustainability and minimizing our impact on the environment.