Mayte Bacete and the rise of a Spanish tech leader
Mayte Bacete believes in the power of collaboration where scientists and institutions unite to advance innovation. Her partnership with a husband who works as a physicist in General Electric’s wind turbine division mirrors this belief. Bacete leads Maxlinear Hispania, the Spanish arm of an American chip-design firm, and she has long seen herself as a trailblazer. She notes she was among the few women in her Valencia Polytechnic University class, a disparity that remains evident nearly three decades later as the workforce at her company remains predominantly male.
Born in Valencia in 1975—during Spain’s transition away from dictatorship—Bacete’s early life included frequent moves. Her father served as a branch manager at a now-defunct bank, which meant their family lived in several towns, including Manises, Vila-real, and Castellón. They lived with three older brothers and a homemaker mother, reflecting the social norms of that era.
Project in Lyon
Holding an industrial engineering degree with a focus on organization and management, Bacete recalls that only about 15 percent of her cohort of 500 students were women. The question of why women have historically gravitated toward sciences and related fields remains, she says. She believes visibility matters—women need role models and access to compelling career pathways to see these professions as attractive and achievable.
With the degree in hand, Bacete chose to complete her final year project in Lyon. Unlike many peers who chased English-language immersion in the United Kingdom, she decided to learn another language first. She arrived in France without prior French language skills and completed an intensive month-long course in Valencia before moving to the Rhône region. She specialized in corporate information management systems and earned a three-month summer internship with France Télécom. As the millennium turned, the French firm recruited her for its Spanish arm Uni2 in Madrid, where she joined the product development department and became focused on cloud-based products that were gaining prominence at the time. The project she joined did not proceed as planned due to security concerns, but the experience broadened her view of technology and international teams.
Return to Valencia
Valencia soon became the next destination after she joined DS2 (Silisium Systems Design), a company created to develop chips and communications technology for the electrical grid. The Great Recession of 2008 hit hard, forcing the firm into bankruptcy and transferring its assets to Marvell, a California-based chip designer. Bacete was appointed director of the Spanish subsidiary at the end of 2010, and in 2017 she was associated with Maxlinear after the American company acquired the firm in the same leadership role.
Located in the Parc Tecnològic de Paterna, the business employs around 130 workers, most of them engineers. Women remain a small portion of the workforce. The company designs a wide range of chips for 5G, data centers, and the evolving Wi-Fi landscape, along with software to help customers deploy and manage these technologies. Production is contracted to third-party manufacturers in Asia.
The company’s growth has been rapid. Orders often exceed the firm’s capacity, a surge driven by global supply constraints, the telecommunications boom, and the disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. These factors are compounded by policy moves from major economies, particularly the European Union and the United States, aimed at boosting domestic chip manufacturing capabilities. While some dependencies on suppliers in China and Taiwan persist, policymakers are increasingly investing to build resilient regional supply chains.
In her view, Bacete remains an optimist, viewing the current ripple as part of typical economic cycles. She anticipates short-term volatility but believes that growth will resume in the coming years as markets adapt and new capacities come online.