Jobs flashing into Lehi

LEHI — IM Flash Technologies LLC on Friday said it will hire 1,850 people in Utah over the next two years and put its corporate headquarters at the former Micron Technology Inc. facility here.

David Simmons, chairman of the Governor's Office of Economic Development Board, said the IM Flash investment in Lehi — $3 billion to $5 billion — represents the largest single business investment ever in the state.

IM Flash is a joint venture between Micron and Intel Corp. The Lehi facility will produce NAND flash memory chips used in a variety of consumer electronics, removable storage and handheld communications devices.

Micron and Intel announced the venture in November, but Micron representatives at the time said only that Lehi could see "hundreds of jobs" as the new company ramped up operations.

"Our plans here are to ramp up a brand new semiconductor factory," Dave Baglee, co-chief executive officer of IM Flash, said Friday. "We've got to go hire the people to put in that. We're looking to hire these 1,850 folks over the next 18 months to two years. With lead time on training and everything, we're moving forward."

The employment total was made public Friday morning when the GOED board approved a tax-rebate incentive to help the company.

Board documents indicate the capital investment for IM Flash will be $3 billion to $5 billion, which includes $1.2 billion to build out the facility — completing the fabrication portion and office space for the headquarters — and the rest for chip manufacturing equipment and other start-up costs.

The average base salary for employees will be about $50,000, which is more than twice the Utah County median of $22,300. Job information is available at www.imftech.com.

"We're going to be hiring across the board to start up the brand new semiconductor fab," Baglee said.

Operators typically must have a minimum of a high school education. Technicians usually have two-year associate degrees. Engineers will be hired with bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees, he said.

"We're running the full gamut here of educational requirements, because we're running a full gamut of a semiconductor fab, which goes all the way from high-volume production to also having some R&D as well. . . . We're in the process of starting to ramp on our hiring here, so we're still at relatively low numbers."

After the chips are manufactured in Lehi, they will be assembled and tested in shared space in a Micron facility in Manassas, Va., and elsewhere.