ASML Cut 1,700 Workers in January. It's Still Doubling Its Eindhoven Workforce to 40,000.

The Scale of ASML's Eindhoven Bet

The Eindhoven city council voted on March 10, 2026, to amend the zoning plan allowing ASML to build a second campus at the Brainport Industries Campus near Eindhoven Airport. The new location will eventually accommodate 20,000 new employees, doubling ASML's regional workforce. The vote followed initial council approval in the summer of 2024 and required a second round after an environmental plan amendment to reroute roads around the site, Omroep Brabant reported.

The numbers reshape the region. ASML already employs roughly 20,000 workers at its Veldhoven headquarters nearby. The new campus brings the regional footprint to approximately 40,000, one of the largest concentrations of semiconductor-equipment engineering talent in Europe.

Timeline at a glance:

ASML plans to begin construction before the summer of 2026, with the first 5,000 workers expected on-site by early 2028, according to NOS. The full build-out will follow in phases the company has not detailed publicly.

The expansion lands alongside a contradictory move: in January 2026, ASML said it would cut 1,700 jobs, mostly in its Netherlands-based technology and IT divisions, to streamline operations and refocus on engineering and innovation. The company reported record 2025 profits of roughly €9.6 billion on €32.7 billion in revenue. The simultaneous cuts and expansion signal a workforce reshuffle, not a slowdown.

The Brainport Industries Campus site sits near Eindhoven Airport, a location chosen to keep ASML's core research, development, and production within the supplier and talent ecosystem that grew up around Veldhoven over three decades. Three landowners within the designated campus area have refused to sell, forcing the municipality to pursue legal acquisition, a friction that could slow early construction phases but has not derailed the project.

For the regional labor market, the arithmetic is stark: 20,000 direct jobs, plus tens of thousands more at suppliers and service firms, DutchNews.nl reported. The Brainport Eindhoven region already runs one of the tightest labor markets in the Netherlands. Adding 20,000 engineering-heavy positions (most requiring specialized degrees in optics, mechatronics, physics, or precision manufacturing) means the region will need to pull talent from across Europe.

Why Now: The AI Compute Squeeze Behind the Expansion

Every advanced AI chip on the planet gets patterned by one of ASML's EUV lithography machines, and no one else makes them. That monopoly — 100% of the global EUV market — is the reason the Eindhoven expansion isn't speculative but a capacity decision grounded in a €36 billion order backlog and a customer base that includes every leading-edge foundry and memory maker on earth.

Those customers are pouring capital into fabrication equipment at the fastest pace in a decade. Nvidia designs the chips. TSMC and SK Hynix fabricate them. And before a single wafer gets processed, someone has to build the lithography systems that make fabrication possible. Each low-NA EUV system sells for roughly €220 million; the next-generation high-NA EUV tools go for between €320 million and €400 million, CNBC reported. In 2025, ASML sold 48 EUV systems and generated €11.6 billion in EUV revenue, now accounting for 65% of the company's backlog. When ASML reported Q4 2025 bookings of €13.16 billion — more than double the €6.32 billion analysts had expected — the number confirmed that AI infrastructure spending has moved from cyclical to structural, Rallies.ai found.

What makes this expansion different from a typical hiring cycle is where the demand originates. Historically, EUV adoption concentrated among logic chipmakers building processors. Now memory makers are joining the wave. SK Hynix, a critical HBM supplier to Nvidia, placed a $7.9 billion order for dozens of ASML EUV scanners delivering through 2027, the largest single order in company history, Yahoo Finance reported. DRAM vendors producing 1b and 1c nodes are intensifying their own EUV procurement. Memory makers operate large fleets to maximize cost efficiency, so each additional EUV layer in a memory process multiplies the number of scanners needed.

Management guided 2026 net sales between €34 billion and €39 billion, and the company's own 2030 modeling targets annual revenue between €44 billion and €60 billion, a range that assumes AI-driven EUV adoption keeps accelerating. Goldman Sachs has modeled an even more aggressive €70 billion scenario, per Yahoo Finance.

The company needs roughly 2,000 additional workers a year not because the labor market is loose, but because the machines it has already sold still need to be built, shipped, installed, and maintained — and the next generation of high-NA EUV tools is about to enter high-volume manufacturing. Intel is expected to be the first high-volume adopter by 2027–2028, with others following, CNBC reported. Each ramp requires field service engineers, system installers, application specialists, and process integration teams that can only be trained on the job, in Veldhoven, next to the people who design the machines.

What Roles ASML Is Actually Hiring For

LinkedIn lists roughly 340 ASML jobs in the Eindhoven area and 108 engineering-specific roles across the Netherlands. A scan of both boards shows the hiring concentrated in a handful of technical disciplines, and the split between internships and experienced hires reveals where the company feels the talent shortage most acutely.

Mechanical and mechatronics engineering dominates the listings. Internship titles include DUV Mechanical Constructions, modal analysis tooling, wafer flatness optimization, and reliability data analysis. These aren't generic mechanical roles; they target the precision-stage and vacuum-chamber subsystems at the core of every EUV scanner. Full-time openings like Quick Response Team Engineer and Team Lead – Manufacturing suggest ASML is also hiring mid-career engineers who can troubleshoot systems already deployed at customer fabs.

Physics and optics is the second-largest cluster. Internship postings cover EUV pellicle research, wafer defectivity analysis, particle contamination analysis, and optical system investigation. The full-time listing for Principal Researcher – Metrology Sensor Physics & Applications points to a need for senior scientists who can bridge sensor design and production-floor calibration. An external posting for an Optical Sensing Engineer in Eindhoven describes integration, calibration, and test of optical sensors in lithography systems, work that requires both modeling skills and hands-on production support.

Software, data science, and AI roles have grown sharply. Internships range from dashboard automation and code-generator migration to machine-learning image correction and GPU-accelerated SPARTA modeling. The Data Science Internship on machine-state classification and the AI workflow optimization posting both feed into ASML's push to use machine learning for predictive maintenance and yield improvement on its own tools. These roles sit at the intersection of computer science and semiconductor process knowledge, a combination that's hard to find.

Industrial engineering and supply chain rounds out the technical hiring. Postings cover supply-chain cost and workforce planning, reverse decision management, and logistics disturbance management. These roles support the operational side of building and servicing scanners at a pace that matches TSMC, Samsung, and Intel's fab expansion schedules.

The seniority mix is telling. On LinkedIn's Netherlands engineering board, 62 of the 108 listings are internships, 14 are entry-level, and 31 are mid-senior. That ratio (roughly 60% internships) signals that ASML is building a pipeline as much as filling seats today. The company's own careers page notes it offers opportunities for students and graduates "in practically every technical field," and the Neurodivergent Interns Program adds a targeted access route.

For engineers weighing a move to Eindhoven, demand is broadest in mechanical, optical, and software engineering, with the steepest competition for roles that combine domain physics knowledge with data-science tooling.

The Supply-Chain Multiplier

ASML's 20,000-headcount expansion doesn't exist in isolation. The company sits at the center of one of the densest semiconductor-equipment supplier clusters in the world, and every new engineer hired on the mega-campus pulls a chain of supporting jobs behind it.

The Brainport Eindhoven region, anchored by ASML's Veldhoven headquarters, hosts a deep ecosystem of suppliers spanning photolithography components, atomic layer deposition tools, die-attach and hybrid-bonding systems, and integrated photonics, The Semiconductor Newsletter reported. The Netherlands' position across these segments means ASML's growth doesn't just fill its own payroll. It sustains a regional supply chain that supports several times the company's direct headcount in indirect employment.

When ASML guided roughly 15% sales growth for 2025 with gross margins near 52%, that revenue flowed directly into procurement from specialized component manufacturers, logistics firms, cleanroom construction companies, and calibration-service providers, most of them concentrated in the Eindhoven corridor. The multiplier is difficult to pin to a single authoritative figure, as neither ASML's annual report nor the Dutch national statistics office breaks out indirect job counts for the Brainport cluster. What is clear is that the ecosystem's hiring moves in step with ASML's. When the company ships a next-generation NXE:3800E EUV system, the demand spike ripples outward to the suppliers who build its optics modules, precision stages, and laser-produced plasma sources, each of which maintains its own engineering and production staff in the region.

The roles that don't appear on any single job board matter most for the regional economy: the machinists at precision-manufacturing subcontractors, the facilities engineers at cleanroom-service firms, the logistics coordinators handling temperature-sensitive optics shipments.

The 1,700 job cuts announced in January add a wrinkle. They target technology and IT divisions for streamlining, not the core engineering and supplier-facing operations tied to the EUV ramp, DutchNews.nl reported. That distinction matters: it suggests the company is concentrating its Dutch headcount on the roles most directly linked to production and supply-chain coordination, the very positions that generate the strongest indirect employment effects.

For engineers weighing a move to Eindhoven, the implication is straightforward. The opportunity isn't just 20,000 jobs at one company. It's an entire regional economy reorganizing around the equipment layer of the AI compute stack — and still struggling to staff it.

Can Eindhoven House 20,000 New Workers?

The region needs roughly 20,000 more homes by 2030 than it was already planning to build — around 5,500 new units per year, a rate far above current production, Sitem.co found in its summary of NL Times reporting. The shortfall is almost entirely attributable to ASML's expansion and the supply-chain jobs expected to follow.

Local political parties and community organizations raised formal objections during the zoning process, warning that the influx of high-skilled, well-paid workers would drive up house prices, squeeze an already tight rental market, and put pressure on roads, public transport, and the healthcare system, DutchNews.nl reported. SP council member Jannie Visscher voted against the zoning amendment, saying the region's growth should not come at the expense of current residents.

The challenge isn't just volume. Researchers who studied the mismatch noted that knowledge migrants, many of them single engineers on temporary contracts, have different housing needs than the families that Eindhoven's social and affordable housing stock traditionally serves. They floated home sharing as one partial solution, while acknowledging that spacious family apartments, the type many mid-career ASML hires seek, are already expensive and scarce. Real estate agents told researchers that local home seekers would face stiffer competition from higher-paid arrivals.

ASML and the municipality of Eindhoven have been coordinating on infrastructure, but the timeline is tight. A regional infrastructure study seen by the AD newspaper projected 115,000 additional jobs in the Brainport region over the next 25 years and concluded that the construction program is unlikely to gain real momentum until 2030, two years after the first wave of employees arrives, DutchNews.nl reported.

The Metropool Regio Eindhoven, the regional coalition of local authorities, scheduled meetings with national ministers to negotiate the investments needed to support the growth. The Dutch government's Operation Beethoven package, designed to keep ASML in the Netherlands, has been described by researchers as insufficient to close the housing gap. Without faster permitting, more zoned land, and a construction workforce that is itself in short supply, the region risks a bottleneck that could slow the very expansion it is racing to enable.

Why ASML Chose Eindhoven Over Abroad

The Eindhoven campus didn't happen because ASML always wanted to stay. It happened because the Dutch government made it too expensive to leave.

In early 2024, ASML was seriously considering expanding production outside the Netherlands. The response from The Hague was swift: a €2.5 billion incentive package, code-named Beethoven, designed to keep the company's growth on Dutch soil, NL Times reported. The scale of that number tells you how much was at stake. ASML isn't just another employer — it's the sole global supplier of extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, the tool without which no advanced chip gets made. Losing its expansion abroad would have meant losing the next decade of semiconductor capacity along with it.

The pressure wasn't only domestic. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick privately told ASML executives in 2025 that Washington believed one of the company's EUV machines, or critical components for one, may have reached China in violation of export controls in place since the first Trump administration, EuropeSays reported. The Netherlands had already aligned its export policies with Washington, blocking EUV sales to China since roughly 2019. But the Lutnick meetings underscored a broader reality: ASML sits at the center of a geopolitical fault line between the US and China, and its location decisions carry national-security weight far beyond corporate strategy.

CEO Christophe Fouquet addressed the tension directly on Dutch television program Buitenhof in November 2025. He called the global semiconductor ecosystem "fragile and interdependent," pointing to the COVID-era chip shortages as proof of how deeply supply chains rely on each other, AnySilicon reported. He also drew a clear line on sovereignty: the Dutch government alone decides what ASML may export, and those decisions are shaped by international arrangements, but Europe and the US do not share identical semiconductor interests. The Hague, he said, must act based on Dutch and European priorities.

That framing explains why the campus landed in Eindhoven rather than near a US fab site or in a lower-cost Asian market. ASML received an exemption from the 15% US tariffs on European goods imposed under the Trump administration, precisely because the US needs ASML equipment to build domestic factories and raising prices would slow that work, AnySilicon reported. But tariffs on intermediate goods moving between Europe and the US still threaten to raise costs for ASML's American customers. Expanding in the Netherlands keeps the company's core R&D and manufacturing base intact while avoiding the friction of cross-Atlantic logistics under an unpredictable trade regime.

Fouquet was blunt about what comes next. He laid out four demands for the next Dutch government: long-term policy stability on AI, semiconductors, and energy regardless of political shifts; easier investment conditions; competitiveness reform; and what he called "radical regulatory reform," not simplification but a full modernization of the business environment. His closing line was direct: "Come to us and ask us what we need."

The Eindhoven campus is the physical answer to that question. For engineers weighing a move to the Netherlands, the geopolitical backdrop isn't abstract — it's the reason the jobs exist here at all.

What Engineers Should Know Before Making the Move

If you're a semiconductor engineer weighing a move to Eindhoven, the compensation picture is concrete. Glassdoor data from 880 anonymous employee reports puts the average ASML engineer salary in Eindhoven at €61,200. Senior roles climb well above it, with Glassdoor's broader salary range topping out at roughly €406,000 for a senior director and senior DevOps engineers averaging around €100 per hour.

For non-EU engineers, the visa path runs through the Highly Skilled Migrant (kennismigrant) residence permit. You need a job offer from a Dutch recognized sponsor, ASML qualifies, and your contract must meet the income threshold that resets every January 1, according to the IND. The process is relatively fast compared to most European work visas, but it hinges on that sponsor relationship. You can't apply independently.

The practical bottleneck isn't visas or salaries. It's housing. Eindhoven's rental market is tight, and the influx of 20,000 additional workers, plus their families, will test the region's capacity for years. If you're serious about moving, start the housing search before you accept the offer. ASML offers relocation support including temporary housing, moving services, and a relocation budget, the company's careers page notes.

The opportunity is real and the demand is structural, not cyclical. But the logistics of actually getting there require more planning than a standard job move.

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