Vietnam-headquartered FPT has been expanding its automotive software footprint in Europe, including the transfer of Nippon Seiki’s Poland software team into FPT Poland. The move comes as automakers increase software content in vehicles while balancing cost, engineering complexity, regulation and the need to keep some capabilities close to vehicle programs.
Following TNGlobal’s coverage of the Poland software-unit transfer, we asked Minh Ta Tran, FPT Automotive SEVP and FPT Poland CEO, FPT Software VP at FPT Corporation, how cross-border delivery is changing, which automotive software skills are hardest to scale, and where AI fits into safety-critical engineering.
What has changed in automotive software engineering that makes cross-border delivery between Asia and Europe more strategically useful now than it was a few years ago?
Cost pressure is changing how European OEMs think about automotive software engineering. A few years ago, many OEMs were still cautious about moving safety-critical or complex software work offshore. Today, as software content in vehicles grows rapidly and development budgets come under increasing pressure, OEMs are becoming more open to globally distributed engineering models. India remains a major offshore destination, but Vietnam is increasingly emerging as a strong alternative, with a large software talent pool, competitive cost structure and growing automotive engineering capabilities.
At the same time, automotive software projects are highly complex and cannot be managed through a pure offshore model alone. They require frequent alignment with customers, deep understanding of vehicle programs, close coordination with R&D teams, and the ability to respond quickly when issues occur at factories, test benches or engineering labs.
For this reason, the most effective model for OEMs today is a best-shore approach: combining onsite resources close to the customer, nearshore teams in Europe for proximity and responsiveness, and offshore teams in Asia for scale, speed and cost efficiency. This is where cross-border delivery between Asia and Europe becomes strategically important, not just as a cost lever, but as a way to balance engineering quality, execution speed and business efficiency.
With the Nippon Seiki Poland software team moving into FPT Poland, how do you integrate a new engineering organization without losing the domain knowledge, customer relationships and development continuity that made the team valuable in the first place?
The transfer of Nippon Seiki’s Poland software team into FPT Poland is not only an integration activity; it is a strategic step to strengthen the long-term global collaboration between FPT and Nippon Seiki. Our first priority is to protect continuity: maintaining stable project teams, preserving customer-facing relationships, retaining domain knowledge and ensuring ongoing development programs continue smoothly.
Rather than treating this as a simple resource transition, we see it as a way to build a stronger joint delivery foundation for Nippon Seiki and other global automotive customers.
At the same time, FPT can leverage this experienced engineering organization to accelerate our growth in the European automotive software market. Poland gives us stronger local expertise, customer proximity and access to Europe’s automotive ecosystem, while FPT’s global scale brings additional engineering capacity, methodologies and delivery flexibility.
We will apply our best-shore model thoroughly, combining onsite presence, nearshore capabilities in Europe and offshore scale from Asia to deliver maximum value to customers, including Nippon Seiki. This model allows us to preserve what made the Poland team valuable while expanding its impact through FPT’s global automotive software network.
As vehicles become more software-defined, where are automakers increasingly relying on technology partners rather than keeping development entirely in-house? Which layers still need to stay closest to the OEM?
Many automakers are bringing more software capabilities in-house, particularly in areas that directly shape product strategy, vehicle architecture, customer experience and brand differentiation. However, as software-driven competitors operate at a much faster pace than traditional automotive development cycles, OEMs need to accelerate R&D, and they should not build everything by themselves.
Collaborating with technology partners can accelerate areas such as platform engineering, software integration, testing and validation, cybersecurity and large-scale software delivery.
This is where FPT adds value. By combining automotive domain expertise with global engineering scale, we help OEMs expand engineering capacity, accelerate R&D and de-risk software execution, while allowing internal teams to focus on what differentiates them most: vehicle dynamics, safety, quality and brand identity.
Which automotive software skills are currently hardest to find at scale, whether in embedded systems, AUTOSAR, functional safety, cybersecurity, ADAS or other areas? Does the talent challenge look different in Europe and Asia?
The hardest capability to build at scale today is no longer a single technology area such as AUTOSAR, ADAS, functional safety or cybersecurity. These skills remain important, but the bigger challenge is the architectural transformation of the vehicle itself. As the industry moves toward software-defined vehicles, automotive software is being restructured from fragmented, ECU-based development into more centralized computing platforms and zonal control systems.
This shift makes system design, software platform development, communication architecture, integration, testing, cybersecurity, functional safety and team organization much more complex. Many traditional working models and legacy platforms were designed for a more distributed ECU architecture, so they are becoming less suitable for the next generation of vehicles.
Therefore, the most difficult skills to find are engineers and architects who can connect multiple disciplines: embedded software, automotive middleware, cloud-native software practices, vehicle networks, safety, cybersecurity, OTA and platform engineering. Europe has strong domain expertise and deep automotive system knowledge, but faces shortages in scalable software-platform talent. Asia has a large and dynamic engineering talent pool, but still needs more people with end-to-end SDV architecture experience and global automotive program exposure.
At FPT, our focus is not only to train engineers in individual technologies, but to develop full-stack automotive software capabilities for the SDV era, combining embedded engineering, platform development, safety and cybersecurity, and distributed delivery across Europe and Asia.
How is AI changing automotive software development, testing and validation today? Where can it materially shorten the engineering cycle, and where do safety or regulatory requirements still demand human validation?
AI is already enhancing software development, automating testing and accelerating validation. We already see it increasingly applied across the cockpit, ADAS, connected vehicles and diagnostics, where AI can enable more personalized, adaptive and intelligent experiences.
However, automotive remains a safety-critical industry. AI-generated outputs must remain traceable, reviewable and subject to established verification and validation processes. Functional safety assessment, cybersecurity approval, vehicle-level validation and regulatory sign-off still require human oversight and judgment. AI’s role is to augment engineering teams, not replace them.
European and Asian automakers operate under different regulatory, cybersecurity and data requirements. How does that affect software architecture and the way a distributed engineering team works across markets?
The biggest change we see is that regulatory compliance, cybersecurity and data governance have become core architectural requirements. In Europe, regulations such as UN R155 and UN R156 have pushed OEMs to adopt stronger cybersecurity and software update management throughout the vehicle lifecycle. In Asia, different markets have their own data, privacy and localization requirements.
This means automakers increasingly need a common, modular software foundation that can support market-specific compliance, cybersecurity, data-handling and feature requirements without fragmenting the core platform.
From FPT’s experience, this also changes how engineering teams operate. Development activities can be distributed across regions, but architectural governance must remain centralized.
FPT has been expanding its automotive engineering footprint beyond Vietnam. What functions can be effectively distributed across regional delivery centers, and where does physical proximity to the automaker still matter?
Many software-driven activities, including software development, platform engineering, testing, validation and AI-assisted engineering, can be distributed effectively across global delivery centers. Our offshore centers in Vietnam and APAC provide deep engineering expertise, scalable delivery capacity, and consistent governance, security and quality standards.
Proximity remains critical for requirements definition, system architecture, vehicle integration and strategic planning, which require close collaboration with OEMs. Through FPT’s best-shore delivery model, onsite teams focus on customer engagement and business alignment, while our nearshore teams in Europe strengthen proximity and responsiveness. This allows us to deliver faster execution, assured outcomes and the flexibility to scale as customer needs evolve.
Looking two to three years ahead, what would tell you that FPT’s European automotive-software expansion is working beyond simply adding headcount or contracts?
Our ambition is to establish Poland as a strategic automotive hub for FPT in Europe, bringing us closer to our clients while expanding our role across the automotive value chain.
Our initial focus is to strengthen Cockpit Domain capabilities. We also see significant demand for ADAS in Europe and plan to expand local capabilities in this area before extending into connected vehicles and cybersecurity.
Ultimately, success in AI-defined mobility will depend on how effectively software, AI and engineering come together, and that is where we aim to partner with our clients to co-create the future of mobility.
Minh Ta Tran is FPT Automotive SEVP and FPT Poland CEO, FPT Software VP at FPT Corporation. He has more than 15 years of automotive-industry experience spanning IVI, embedded software and global automotive delivery.
Editor’s note: This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity and TNGlobal house style. The substance of the interviewee’s responses has been preserved.
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