Thought Leadership

We are committed to building thought leaders, which are evidenced by nearly 9,300 team members (representing 31% of our IDL workforce) who are specifically dedicated to R&D. Through broad exposure to job-based development activities, we have been able to advance team members through internal promotions. In addition, we hired 1,523 new R&D team members and named additional technical directors, program directors and fellows.

To enable in-depth analysis of the current R&D workforce baseline for our strategic R&D workforce planning, we updated our R&D job structure with more defined job descriptions and specific skill domains. R&D team members are being transitioned into the new job profiles, so we can better assess and develop the skills and capabilities of these team members across NXP.

To further develop the R&D community, we launched the NXP R&D Academy, offering a variety of learning opportunities. We have dedicated development programs in the areas of architecture, functional safety, design quality, crypto and security.

In 2021, we had nearly 3,400 team members attend the NXP Architecture and System Engineering School and the NXP Safety Academy:

• The NXP Architecture and System Engineering (ASE) School was created to help nurture and develop top technical experts, architects and systems engineers to deliver top-rated hardware and software solutions per the current market demands. Ultimately, the ASE School offers exposure to the latest industry technology trends through enriching technical sessions and thought-provoking workshops led by internal experts and selected external partners. The desired result is a technical talent pool that is effective in their current role and future roles as Architectural or System Engineers.
• The NXP Safety Academy helps team members explores safety products and enablement collateral to simplify ISO 26262 compliance, understand safety deliverables and how they can help accelerate time to market. Four different on-demand learning paths have been defined to give team members the opportunity to gain expertise to more quickly design safety-critical automotive applications.

In addition, we offer trainings and regular webinars, allowing our R&D community to grow their knowledge and stay up to date with the latest developments and innovations. For example:

• We hosted the 2XP, a session that allows NXP experts to share their work and latest insights with their peers. In 2021, there were 32 sessions that brought together more than 3,600 attendees
• In India, we introduced a dedicated program to grow Technical Leadership. In 2021, we had 81 team members participate, 31 of which were part of a mentoring program that paired them with technical leaders in the company.
• The NXP R&D Academy will further expand in the coming years with additional schools on artificial intelligence, SoC development and ideation.

In addition, NXP created a dedicated R&D Project Management (PM) Academy, including PM leadership training and PM mentoring – collectively, these sessions had more than 45 participants in 2021. Looking ahead to 2022, we intend to introduce a PM masterclass and setup for certification.

Our new product introduction (NPI) projects have become more and more complex, requiring large investment as well as successful, timely and efficient completion. Our PM talent is vital to our ability to drive these projects to completion, hence NXP has placed greater focus to further invest in skilled and capable project leaders. Our consistent focus on R&D and innovation resulted in NXP being awarded increased number of individual patents during 2021.