HER STORY
Most people, when they think of a Micron technician, picture someone who has followed a straight line: poly, semiconductor, done. Rohmina Klarisse Baggayan's path looked nothing like that, and that's exactly what makes it interesting.
After graduating from Singapore Polytechnic (SP) in 2022 with a Diploma in Electrical & Electronic Engineering, she spent two years at a very different kind of engineering company: HPE Aruba, a research and development lab where she was testing network switches for compliance with international safety standards, soldering circuit boards, and managing climatic chamber experiments. It was hands-on, precise, and genuinely demanding work, just not the semiconductor world her SP microelectronics modules had pointed toward.
In September 2024, she moved to Micron Technology, one of the world's largest memory chip manufacturers, a company whose DRAM and NAND flash chips are found in virtually every smartphone, laptop, and data centre on the planet. It was a different industry at a different scale, but it required the same engineering instincts.
TWO INDUSTRIES, ONE SKILL SET
What Rohmina's career path illustrates, even in its early stages, is something that engineering students rarely hear about: the skills transfer.
This is what SP’s Engineering curriculum was designed for. Not to train you for one specific job title, but to give you a way of thinking and a set of practical instincts that work across industries. Rohmina didn't need to start over from scratch when she joined Micron.
| I enjoyed my time at HPE Aruba Networking and developed a growing passion for building network switches and transceivers, but my passion for semiconductors never wavered. I would often think about how I secured a spot at SP through the Early Admissions Exercise (EAE) by expressing my dream of pursuing related roles in the semiconductor industry, and how I worked towards that by specialising in Microelectronics. These thoughts strengthened my desire to return to the semiconductor industry. |
WHAT THE JOB TITLE ACTUALLY MEANS
Rohmina is currently an NVM mNAND QRA EFA Technician.
NVM stands for Non-Volatile Memory — the kind of memory that keeps its data even when the power is off. mNAND is a specific type of NAND flash memory used in embedded applications. QRA is Quality and Reliability Assurance — the process of making sure chips meet the standards they're supposed to meet before they ship. EFA stands for Electrical Failure Analysis — figuring out, at the electrical level, exactly why a chip has failed.
Put it all together, and Rohmina's job means testing Micron's memory chips, verifying if they're reliable enough to ship to customers around the world, and, when something goes wrong, helping to investigate why. In an industry where a single faulty memory chip can cause a phone to crash, a server to lose data, or a car's safety system to malfunction, the work matters.
IN HER OWN WORDS — A DAY IN THE LIFE I would collect rejected units requiring Electrical Failure Analysis (EFA) and review their test history to identify prior failure modes. Based on the failing test conditions, I would retest the units using either Automated Test Equipment (ATE) or a bench tester to determine whether the issue was a true failure or a non-correlation. In some cases, depending on the test history, I would proceed directly to a root cause investigation by collecting direct NAND data. This process bypasses the controller, allowing isolation of potential controller-related issues if the NAND data is clean. If abnormalities were detected, the issue could indicate an open or short within the NAND die or elsewhere within the rejected unit. Following this, I would coordinate further physical analysis by sending the rejected units for CSAM and X-ray inspection to identify any internal physical damage. Once sufficient failure analysis data had been gathered, the engineering team would take over to continue any advanced EFA activities as needed. |
WHAT IT MEANS TO WORK AT A COMPANY LIKE MICRON
Micron is one of only three companies in the world that manufacture DRAM memory at scale, and one of a handful that produce NAND flash. Its chips are in iPhones, Windows PCs, AI servers, and the systems that run hospitals, stock exchanges, and logistics networks. When Rohmina validates a batch of chips, the downstream effect of that work ripples across industries she may never directly see.
My time at HPE Aruba Networking significantly eased my onboarding process at Micron, as I was already familiar with the working environment and required minimal training. I was also trained in surface-mount soldering, which required a much higher level of precision compared to the through-hole soldering taught in school. Through-hole resistors can be as small as 0.6 mm x 0.3 mm. This experience helped develop my precision handling skills, which are now essential in my current role at Micron, where I work with solder balls measuring just 0.32 mm in diameter. |
TO THOSE CONSIDERING A CAREER IN ENGINEERING
For those deciding whether engineering is for them, or for those already in the field who wonder whether their first job defines their whole career, Rohmina's path so far has a clear message: your first job is not your only job. The skills you build are yours to take with you.
| Your first role doesn’t lock you in—it mainly gives you experience, skills, and information about what you do and do not like. |
Singapore Polytechnic
500 Dover Rd Singapore 139651