How to Apply to Fair Friend Group (FFG)

10 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 26 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • FFG is a federation of 30+ machine-tool brands, not a single employer — apply to a specific subsidiary and use the right local channel.
  • Taipei HQ and Taiwan brands hire through 104.com.tw (Fair Friend Enterprise, company ID e6o7g3l on 104); Goodway uses 104 ID o1txua8.
  • HELLER Germany runs on Cegid Talentsoft at recruitment.heller.biz; MAG U.S. is best reached through LinkedIn given current portal issues; mainland China uses 51job and Liepin.
  • Working language is Mandarin at HQ, German at HELLER, English at MAG, Mandarin (Simplified) at China plants — match your CV and cover letter accordingly.
  • FFG's competitive identity is machine tools — automotive, aerospace, energy, semiconductor end markets — and interviews favour candidates who can speak the trade fluently, including controls (Siemens, FANUC, Heidenhain) and competitors (Mazak, DMG Mori, Okuma).
  • The founder, Jimmy Chu, is still active and decisions of consequence flow back to Taipei; expect long, deliberate hiring cycles with cross-strait and cross-cultural coordination.
  • Watch the calendar: Chinese New Year (Jan/Feb) and Mid-Autumn Festival (Sept) routinely add weeks to the process for any role touching Greater China.

About Fair Friend Group (FFG)

Fair Friend Group (友嘉集團, FFG) is a Taipei-headquartered industrial conglomerate that, by revenue, sits among the three largest machine-tool builders in the world — alongside Japan's Yamazaki Mazak and DMG Mori. Founded in 1979 by Jimmy Chu (朱志洋), who is still actively chairing the group well into his seventies, FFG has grown through more than thirty acquisitions over four decades into a federation of roughly 30 brands, around 7,000 employees worldwide, and approximately US$2.5 billion in annual revenue. The portfolio is unusual in machine tools for its sheer breadth: Taiwanese turning and machining-center brands Feeler and Goodway sit alongside Germany's HELLER (acquired 2010), Italy's Jobs and Sigma, Japan's IKEGAI (acquired 2007) and Honor Seiki, U.S.-based MAG Americas (the former Cross Hüller / Giddings & Lewis lineage), and Gleason gear-machinery assets. FFG's corporate centre operates from Xizhi, New Taipei, with major manufacturing concentrations in Taichung (Taiwan), Hangzhou and Suzhou (mainland China), Nürtingen (Germany), and the U.S. Midwest. The group also owns infrastructure and green-energy assets in Taiwan, which means an FFG career can mean almost anything from designing a five-axis machining center in Baden-Württemberg to running a wind-farm subsidiary in Changhua. Culturally, FFG is best understood as a Chinese-style family conglomerate rather than a single global employer. Decisions of consequence still flow up to Chu and a small circle of long-tenured Taiwanese executives, while individual brands retain meaningful operational autonomy — HELLER in particular runs as a German engineer-driven business with IG Metall co-determination, and MAG Americas operates as a Detroit-area auto-tier supplier in English. The working language at the Taipei HQ is Mandarin (Traditional Chinese, Taiwanese-inflected); cross-border coordination happens in English; mainland Chinese subsidiaries operate in Mandarin (Simplified). The 2024–2025 macro picture is mixed for the group — automotive tier-1 capex weakness on EV transition pressures HELLER and MAG, while aerospace, defense, and semiconductor-adjacent precision work has been a tailwind for Goodway, Feeler, and the Japanese precision-grinding brands. Cross-strait politics increasingly affect mobility between the Taiwan parent and the mainland operations, which is worth understanding before applying to a role that crosses that boundary.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Decide which subsidiary you are actually applying to

    Decide which subsidiary you are actually applying to. FFG is a federation, not a single recruiter — Goodway in Taichung, HELLER in Nürtingen, and MAG in Detroit have different hiring managers, different ATS systems, and different working languages. Pick the legal entity first, then the role.

  2. 2
    For Taipei HQ and Taiwan-based group roles, apply through 104

    For Taipei HQ and Taiwan-based group roles, apply through 104.com.tw, Taiwan's dominant job board. Search for 友嘉實業股份有限公司 (Fair Friend Enterprise) at https://www.104.com.tw/company/e6o7g3l — at the time of writing the parent has roughly 26+ open positions and 186 followers. A 104 profile in Traditional Chinese is expected.

  3. 3
    For Goodway specifically, the official career page at goodwaycnc

    For Goodway specifically, the official career page at goodwaycnc.com/en/careers/careers.html links straight to its own 104.com.tw profile (company ID o1txua8). Other Taiwan brands such as Feeler and Honor Seiki follow the same 104-first pattern; check 1111.com.tw as a secondary board if you cannot find the role on 104.

  4. 4
    For HELLER (Germany), apply at recruitment

    For HELLER (Germany), apply at recruitment.heller.biz, which runs on Cegid Talentsoft (a French SaaS HR platform widely used in European industrial groups). The portal serves both German-language and English-language requisitions; production and apprenticeship roles are typically German-only, while engineering and international service roles often accept English applications.

  5. 5
    For MAG (U

    For MAG (U.S.) and Heller-Hartford Americas, the public mag-ias.com and heller-us.com domains have intermittent SSL/certificate problems — work through LinkedIn job postings tagged to the legal entity (FFG MAG Inc., MAG IAS LLC, Heller Machine Tools L.P.) and route applications through the recruiter listed on the post or the local plant HR contact in Sterling Heights, MI.

  6. 6
    Mainland China subsidiaries (Hangzhou Friend, Suzhou Friend, Friend CNC) recruit

    Mainland China subsidiaries (Hangzhou Friend, Suzhou Friend, Friend CNC) recruit primarily through 51job.com (前程无忧), Liepin.com, and Zhilian Zhaopin (智联招聘); Boss Zhipin is increasingly common for engineering roles. Resumes in Simplified Chinese with a Chinese ID-style photo are standard.

  7. 7
    For Italian (Jobs S

    For Italian (Jobs S.p.A., Sigma) and Japanese (IKEGAI, MAG Japan) subsidiaries, apply via the local legal entity websites — these brands hire infrequently and often source through industry contacts, trade-show recruiting at EMO or JIMTOF, and trade-school partnerships.

  8. 8
    Expect a multi-week timeline

    Expect a multi-week timeline. Subsidiary HR makes the initial decision; for senior, cross-border, or HQ-visible roles, final sign-off frequently routes back to Taipei, which can stretch the calendar — especially around Chinese New Year (late January / February) and Mid-Autumn Festival (September).

Resume Tips for Fair Friend Group (FFG)

recommended

Match the resume language to the legal entity

Match the resume language to the legal entity. Taipei HQ and Taiwan brands expect a Traditional Chinese 履歷 (often the 104.com.tw structured profile itself rather than a PDF); HELLER expects a German Lebenslauf with photo, signed cover letter, and Arbeitszeugnisse (employer references) for German-based roles; MAG Americas expects a standard one-to-two-page U.S. résumé.

recommended

Lead with the machine-tool, automation, or precision-engineering lineage that ma

Lead with the machine-tool, automation, or precision-engineering lineage that maps to FFG's actual business — CNC turning and milling, five-axis machining, gear cutting, transfer lines, automotive powertrain machining, aerospace structurals, semiconductor backend equipment. Generic 'manufacturing operations' framing will not differentiate you against candidates from Mazak, DMG Mori, Okuma, or Makino.

recommended

Name the controls and CAM ecosystems you have actually worked in: Siemens Sinume

Name the controls and CAM ecosystems you have actually worked in: Siemens Sinumerik, FANUC, Heidenhain, Mitsubishi, plus Mastercam, NX CAM, hyperMILL, ESPRIT. These are the explicit currencies of the trade across the FFG brands and they will be checked in interview.

recommended

If you are a service, applications, or sales engineer, list the OEM end-customer

If you are a service, applications, or sales engineer, list the OEM end-customers you have supported. FFG sells heavily into automotive (BMW, VW, Stellantis, Ford), aerospace (Boeing, Airbus, Rolls-Royce), and rail; demonstrating you can talk to a tier-1 powertrain plant is more useful than a generic 'B2B sales' framing.

recommended

For roles that touch the cross-strait organisation (Taipei HQ coordinating with

For roles that touch the cross-strait organisation (Taipei HQ coordinating with Hangzhou/Suzhou plants), state your Mandarin reading/writing/speaking level honestly and call out any prior China-side work experience, business-trip history, or supply-chain exposure. Conversational Mandarin is functionally a hard requirement for many group-level roles even when the posting is in English.

recommended

For HELLER specifically, German manufacturing CV norms apply: include date of bi

For HELLER specifically, German manufacturing CV norms apply: include date of birth, place of birth, marital status if you choose, a professional headshot, and chronological education back to Abitur or equivalent. Anglophone candidates targeting HELLER should still produce a German-formatted CV if they expect to be taken seriously for plant-based roles in Nürtingen.

recommended

Quantify in industry-native units: spindle counts, throughput in parts/hour, cyc

Quantify in industry-native units: spindle counts, throughput in parts/hour, cycle-time reductions in seconds, accuracy in microns, MTBF in hours, scrap-rate deltas in basis points. FFG's evaluators are mostly engineers and shop-floor leaders — vague business-school metrics will land flat.

recommended

Be explicit about willingness to travel

Be explicit about willingness to travel. Service engineers spend significant time at customer plants worldwide, and group-level commercial roles move regularly between Taipei, Taichung, Hangzhou, Nürtingen, and the U.S. Midwest. Silence on travel is read as unwillingness.

ATS System: Multi-ATS federation: 104.com.tw (Taiwan HQ), Cegid Talentsoft (HELLER Germany), 51job/Liepin (China), LinkedIn-routed (MAG U.S.)

FFG does not run a single global ATS. The Taiwanese parent and Taiwan-based brands publish openings through 104.com.tw — the dominant Traditional Chinese job board — using the standard 104 structured profile and proprietary application flow. HELLER in Germany operates on Cegid Talentsoft, a French enterprise HR cloud common across European industrial groups, accessible at recruitment.heller.biz. Mainland Chinese subsidiaries default to 51job.com, Liepin, Zhilian Zhaopin, and Boss Zhipin. North American operations (MAG, Heller-Hartford) currently route via LinkedIn and direct recruiter contact because of intermittent issues with their own legacy career portals. Italian (Jobs, Sigma) and Japanese (IKEGAI, MAG Japan) brands hire low-volume and often through industry network rather than a dedicated ATS.

  • On 104.com.tw, the structured profile fields matter more than a PDF attachment — Taiwanese recruiters search and filter on the 104 schema (industry, function, years of experience, certifications). Fill every field in Traditional Chinese where possible.
  • Cegid Talentsoft (HELLER) supports CV upload but parses Lebenslauf-formatted PDFs reliably; avoid heavy graphics, two-column layouts, or text inside images, which the parser silently drops.
  • Mainland Chinese boards (51job, Liepin) reward keyword density in Simplified Chinese and explicit listing of 国标 (national standard) certifications, 高级工程师 grade, and any 国务院 (State Council) project affiliations for senior engineering roles.
  • LinkedIn applications for MAG and Heller U.S. roles work best when paired with a direct outreach to the named recruiter on the post — the in-house ATS behind the scenes is unstable enough that messages get lost.
  • Use the legal entity name FFG actually files under for the geography you're targeting — '友嘉實業股份有限公司' for Taiwan HQ, 'GEBR. HELLER Maschinenfabrik GmbH' for Germany, 'FFG MAG Inc.' for the U.S., 'Hangzhou Friend Precision Machinery Co., Ltd.' for mainland China — search and tagging are sensitive to the exact legal name.

Interview Culture

Interview culture varies more by subsidiary than at almost any other large machine-tool group, so set expectations by location.

At the Taipei HQ and Taiwan brands, expect a hierarchical, relationship-driven process: an HR screen, a technical conversation with a department head, and — for any role with visibility above middle management — a meeting with a senior executive that may include the founder Jimmy Chu himself for senior or strategic positions. Taiwanese interviews are formally polite, lean on biographical questions about education and family circumstances, and expect candidates to demonstrate seriousness, loyalty, and a long-term orientation rather than to perform. Salary negotiation is restrained and typically happens after the offer rather than during interviews. At HELLER in Germany, the process is the classical German engineering interview: a structured first round with HR plus a Fachvorgesetzter (technical supervisor), a deep technical second round, often a plant tour, sometimes an Assessment Center for graduate or trainee positions, and a Betriebsrat (works council) touchpoint for many roles. Punctuality, technical depth, and willingness to engage on detail are non-negotiable. At MAG in the U.S. Midwest, expect a more familiar U.S. industrial interview — phone screen, on-site with hiring manager and a peer panel, behavioral and technical mixed. In mainland China, interviews are pragmatic and direct; expect explicit questions about salary expectations, household registration (户口), and willingness to be posted between Hangzhou, Suzhou, and other plant cities. Across every geography, candidates who can speak credibly about machine-tool end markets — automotive powertrain, aerospace structurals, energy, semiconductor — and about competing OEMs (Mazak, DMG Mori, Okuma, Makino, Doosan, Hurco) consistently advance further than those who treat FFG as a generic industrial employer.

What Fair Friend Group (FFG) Looks For

  • Genuine machine-tool or precision-engineering domain expertise — graduates from mechanical engineering programs with internships at machine-tool builders, tier-1 automotive plants, or aerospace machine shops are strongly preferred over generic manufacturing-operations backgrounds.
  • Multi-controller fluency: working comfort with Siemens Sinumerik, FANUC, Heidenhain, and (for the Italian and Japanese brands) Mitsubishi controls is a near-baseline expectation for engineering, applications, and service roles.
  • Language profile that fits the role: Mandarin for Taiwan and China; German plus working English for HELLER plant roles; English plus a second European language for HELLER international service; English-only acceptable for most MAG U.S. roles; Italian for Jobs/Sigma; Japanese for IKEGAI.
  • Cross-cultural literacy across the Taiwan-Germany-U.S.-China-Japan-Italy axis. FFG's competitive advantage is its ability to coordinate a federated set of culturally distinct businesses, and group-level hires are explicitly evaluated on whether they can operate across that span without friction.
  • Customer-facing comfort with the actual end markets — automotive OEMs and powertrain plants, aerospace primes and tier-1s, defense, energy (including wind, where FFG has Taiwanese exposure), and semiconductor capital equipment.
  • Willingness to travel — and, for senior commercial and engineering roles, willingness to be posted internationally across the group for multi-year assignments.
  • A long-term orientation. FFG is a privately held, family-controlled group with low public-market visibility and slow, deliberate strategic moves; it tends to hire people who plan to stay for a decade rather than two years.
  • For HELLER specifically: respect for the German Mittelstand operating model, IG Metall co-determination, and the autonomy of the Nürtingen organisation. Candidates who appear to view HELLER as a Taiwanese subsidiary to be managed top-down rarely succeed there.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where does Fair Friend Group actually post its jobs?
There is no single global FFG career portal. The Taiwanese parent (友嘉實業股份有限公司, Fair Friend Enterprise) posts on 104.com.tw at company ID e6o7g3l. Goodway uses its own 104 page (ID o1txua8). HELLER in Germany uses Cegid Talentsoft at recruitment.heller.biz. Mainland Chinese subsidiaries default to 51job.com, Liepin, Zhilian Zhaopin, and Boss Zhipin. MAG and Heller-Hartford in the U.S. are most reliably reached through LinkedIn job postings tagged to the legal entity, because their direct portals have had recurring SSL certificate problems.
Do I need to speak Mandarin to work at FFG?
It depends on which subsidiary. For Taipei HQ, Taiwan-based brands (Feeler, Goodway, Honor Seiki), and mainland China subsidiaries, functional Mandarin is effectively a hard requirement. For HELLER in Germany, German plus working English is what matters; Mandarin is a nice-to-have. For MAG in the U.S. and the European brands, English is the working language. For any group-level role that coordinates Taipei with overseas subsidiaries, conversational Mandarin will significantly widen the door.
What is the relationship between FFG and HELLER?
FFG acquired GEBR. HELLER Maschinenfabrik, the German machining-center and transfer-line specialist, in 2010. HELLER continues to operate from Nürtingen with substantial autonomy as a German Mittelstand engineering business — IG Metall representation, German-language operations, German engineering culture, and a Betriebsrat (works council). FFG's role is strategic ownership and capital, not day-to-day operational control. Interviewing at HELLER feels almost entirely like interviewing at a German machine-tool builder, not at a Taiwanese conglomerate.
What is the relationship between FFG and MAG?
FFG acquired most of the U.S. assets of the former MAG Industrial Automation Systems group around 2013, including legacy brands tied to Cross Hüller, Giddings & Lewis, and Cincinnati. Today MAG operates from the Detroit-area U.S. Midwest as an automotive-tier-1 machine-tool supplier serving powertrain and structural machining. Like HELLER, it runs as a relatively autonomous regional operation with English as the working language, and recruiting is largely handled by local U.S. HR rather than from Taipei.
Is Jimmy Chu still running the company?
Yes. Founder and chairman Jimmy Chu (朱志洋) remains actively involved in strategy and major capital allocation decisions despite being in his seventies, and FFG continues to operate as a founder-led, family-influenced private group. For senior or strategic hires, expect the process to ultimately route past him or his immediate circle, which is one reason offer cycles for senior positions can be long.
What is the best time of year to apply?
Avoid the run-up to Chinese New Year (typically late January through mid-February in Taiwan and mainland China) and the Mid-Autumn Festival window in September if you need a fast decision — both effectively pause hiring activity for one to three weeks. The most active hiring windows for the Taiwan and China operations are March–May and October–November. HELLER and MAG follow Western calendars; January–March and September–October are their busiest hiring windows.
Do FFG subsidiaries hire internationally — and will they sponsor visas?
Yes, but selectively. HELLER routinely hires non-German EU citizens and sponsors Blue Cards for engineers from outside the EU when the role justifies it. MAG sponsors U.S. work authorisation for hard-to-fill engineering roles but defaults to local U.S. talent. Taiwan HQ hires foreign nationals for specialist or international-coordination roles and supports Taiwan's gold card and employment-pass routes; expect Mandarin to be a near-prerequisite. Mainland Chinese subsidiaries hire foreigners much less frequently and the work-permit process there has tightened in recent years.
What is the work culture like at the Taipei HQ?
Hierarchical, founder-influenced, and relationship-driven, with the conservatism typical of Taiwan's older industrial conglomerates. Working hours are long by Western standards but more humane than many Taiwanese tech companies; loyalty and tenure are valued, and decisions of any consequence cascade up. Direct, U.S.-style challenge of senior management is unusual and rarely rewarded. Expect Mandarin in meetings, Traditional Chinese in documentation, and considerable face-time culture — including business-dinner socialising — that matters for advancement.
How does FFG view cross-strait (Taiwan-mainland China) mobility for employees?
FFG runs substantial operations on both sides of the strait — Taipei HQ and Taichung manufacturing in Taiwan, and major plants in Hangzhou and Suzhou. Historically the group has rotated engineers and managers between Taiwan and mainland operations, and that experience is valued for advancement. However, the political environment between Taipei and Beijing has tightened both regulatory scrutiny and personal sensitivity around cross-strait postings since the early 2020s. Expect honest conversations during interviews about your willingness and ability to spend time in both jurisdictions, and about household considerations.
What is the outlook for the machine-tool business and what does it mean for FFG hiring?
The 2024–2025 cycle is mixed. Automotive tier-1 capex is soft as OEMs digest the EV transition and rationalise legacy ICE powertrain machining capacity — that headwind hits HELLER and MAG, both of which are exposed to powertrain transfer lines. Offsetting that, aerospace and defense backlogs are strong, semiconductor backend capital is recovering, and Taiwan's onshoring of advanced manufacturing benefits the parent. Net effect on hiring: HELLER and MAG hire selectively for replacement and strategic skills (electrification, automation, software) rather than expansion; Goodway, Feeler, and the precision-grinding brands have a more constructive tone. Roles tied to aerospace, defense, semiconductor, and automation are the strongest area to target across the group.

Open Positions

Fair Friend Group (FFG) currently has 26 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 26 open positions at Fair Friend Group (FFG)

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Sources

  1. Fair Friend Group official corporate website —
  2. Fair Friend Enterprise hiring page on 104.com.tw (Taiwan) —
  3. Goodway CNC official careers page —
  4. Goodway hiring page on 104.com.tw —
  5. HELLER Career & Jobs (Gebr. Heller Maschinenfabrik GmbH) —
  6. HELLER Recruitment portal on Cegid Talentsoft —
  7. Cegid Talentsoft enterprise HR platform —
  8. 104 Job Bank (Taiwan's primary recruitment platform) —
  9. 1111 Job Bank (Taiwan secondary recruitment platform) —
  10. 51job (前程无忧, mainland China primary recruitment platform) —