If India’s tech future has a blueprint, Jaya Jagadish helped draft it. As Country Head and Senior Vice President of Silicon Design Engineering at AMD India, she has quietly but powerfully steered one of the world’s leading semiconductor companies through a period of unprecedented growth, innovation, and transformation.
A long journey with AMD
With a career that began in 1994 as a Design Engineer at AMD’s Austin office, Jaya has grown with the company literally and figuratively. In 2005, she played a key role in establishing AMD’s India development centre in Bengaluru. Today, under her leadership, the centre is a 5,000-strong powerhouse contributing to AMD’s global CPU roadmap and next-generation computing platforms.
Changing the narrative around chips
Talking to Hook about how more women could be involved in hardware manufacturing, Jaya pointed out the broader challenge: perception. “There’s a misconception about semiconductors,” she says. “Many people think it’s hard.” But she believes this myth is holding back talent from entering what is, in reality, a deeply creative, future-forward field. “There’s so much scope for innovation. It’s become central to so many industries.”Her message is simple yet powerful: hardware engineering isn’t just essential—it’s exciting.
As semiconductors increasingly power everything from AI to automotive, the field offers a vast canvas for engineers and innovators alike. “The landscape has changed significantly,” she notes, “and there are many opportunities today that simply didn’t exist 20 years ago.”
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India at the Core
Jaya also highlights how AMD India has moved from a support function to a strategic centre within its parent company. “India is more central to AMD at a global level now,” she says. And with India’s push for semiconductor self-sufficiency, there’s more room than ever for industry-government collaboration. “With our diversified portfolio and these partnerships, we can play a role in strengthening the overall ecosystem.”
Power and purpose
So, what does power mean to a woman who leads one of the largest engineering teams in India's private tech sector? “To me, power is the ability to make a positive change,” she says. For her, that means evangelising hardware engineering and semiconductors as a viable, fulfilling career path, especially for women.And while the recognition from Fortune India’s Most Powerful Women 2025 list is deeply meaningful, Jaya says the real reward is being part of a community of women she “admires and respects.”
