ROCKLIN, September 21 — Sierra College’s mechatronics programme has become the working front end of a regional push to staff up Sacramento’s semiconductor cluster, with Bosch confirming it has hired 13 technicians from the college since acquiring its Roseville site in 2023. The Greater Sacramento Economic Council unveiled a workforce development action plan designed to build a pipeline from local classrooms into chip manufacturing jobs, developed with consulting firm Trusted Strategic Solutions. The plan treats the region’s people, rather than its land or incentives, as the binding constraint on expansion.
Daniel Marrujo, president and managing director of Trusted Strategic Solutions, said GSEC approached his firm after an evaluation by Newmark with a vision to expand Sacramento’s chip manufacturing sector. “People are quintessential to any capability that is either being stood up or planning to expand,” Marrujo said.
“We focused on workforce development as being the core focus for this action plan, looking at all of the demands that industry had in the region.”
What mechatronics actually teaches
Sierra College’s programme combines mechanical and electrical engineering concepts — the technical reality being that a modern fab technician has to reason about both domains at once. Willy Duncan, superintendent of Sierra College, said the programme gives students a strong basis in how things mechanically work and what happens when electrified with a chip to regulate and move processes. Students can earn a certificate in mechatronics in 18 months, or an AA or AS degree.
The demand side is not speculative. The market for semiconductor jobs is expected to add more than 100,000 positions nationwide by 2035, according to the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Semiconductors are the materials used to make chips that power most modern electronics, including phones, laptops, cars, solar energy, defence technologies, artificial intelligence and medical devices. Sacramento is home to nine global semiconductor companies: Bosch, Samsung, Intel, Micron, Solidigm, AMD, Kioxia, Qualcomm and Western Digital.
Bosch’s Roseville build-out
German-based manufacturing company Bosch acquired the former TSI facility in Roseville in 2023 and was awarded $225 million in CHIPS funding to transform the facility into a major U.S. production hub for silicon carbide chips. The Roseville site has also been awarded a $25 million California Competes Tax Credit incentive from the Governor’s Office of Business & Economic Development to support redevelopment and investment. Bosch intends to start U.S.-based commercial manufacturing in 2026, just three years after acquiring the site.
Through a partnership with Bosch, Sierra College students have a direct pathway to jobs. Bosch said in an email that it has hired 13 technicians from Sierra College since acquiring the site, including associates previously in operations who were promoted after obtaining mechatronics certificates.
One of those hires is Sacramento native Ella Oettle, who completed the Sierra College mechatronics programme and now works for Bosch as a line maintenance technician level 1. She has been with the company for two years. “I was hired by Bosch right out of graduating from Sierra College Mechatronics program, and I had no prior semiconductor experience before that, or much prior work experience,” Oettle said.
“This is my first full-time job out of college, but over the last two years, I’ve gained a lot of knowledge about the areas that I am working on in the fab.” The detail that matters for the wider plan is the 18-month certificate. Silicon carbide production is a capital-intensive business, and the constraint Bosch and its peers face is not tooling but people who can keep a fab line running.
A community college certificate that converts a graduate with no prior industry experience into a line maintenance technician is, under the hood, exactly the pipeline GSEC says it wants to scale. Watch whether the action plan extends the same classroom-to-fab route to the other eight companies named in the region, and whether Bosch’s 2026 manufacturing start holds to schedule.
