March 23rd 2026
From an engineer to a technical sales representative: Chunting Zhong talks about the power of perseverance and finding a way to achieve her goals.
The year has only just begun but the first item on Chunting’s annual wish list has already been ticked off. “I always make a yearly plan,” she says. In 2026, she aimed to transfer from the position of a process engineer to a role in sales. A plan that got realized even earlier than anticipated. After all, as Chunting said during her interview at PHIX, “as an Asian, I might be generally more modest, but I know what I want and will find a way to get it.”
Chunting’s perseverance precedes her and is certainly one of the reasons why she landed a job at PHIX in 2022, right after obtaining her PhD in chemistry in Germany. “It is a nice story that I tell people often,” she says about how she got hired.
“I saw that PHIX would be presenting at an expo in Munich, so I decided to go.” On the last day of the event, Chunting visited the PHIX booth several times, but it was always too busy to talk to anyone. “At 16:30, everyone was packing up and I was feeling exhausted because I spent the whole day speaking with a lot of people,” she recalls. “I was about to leave, but I stopped myself. I realized that I’d regret it if I didn’t talk to PHIX.”
She gave it one last shot, waited her turn and, in the end, she walked away with a business card and a promise of a job interview. “Colleagues later told me that I was famous at PHIX because of the meeting at the expo,” smiles Chunting. “They weren’t really planning to hire anyone but then I showed up.”
After three years as an engineer at PHIX, Chunting became an expert in 3D printing lenses on the Nanoscribe Quantum X align machine. Knowing the equipment and the technology inside and out, she felt that her technical knowledge could be more useful in supporting customers rather than in a classic engineering role. Since then, she began her mission to switch to technical sales, a goal that she achieved a few months ago.
“I like to talk to new people, learn what is happening in the industry and how we can create the most value. I want to use my knowledge. That is also one of the reasons why I switched from academia to industry,” she explains the change of direction, adding that her technical background gives her a certain advantage in sales. “As an engineer, I have the full technical knowledge. I can better explain what we can or cannot do and why.”
Chunting is a go-getter in her private life as well. She bought a house shortly after getting a job at PHIX to make Enschede her home. This year, Chunting will be getting married to her Dutch fiancée. Atop her wedding, she also wants to visit “at least one new country every year” and dedicate more time and energy to her hobbies.
“The culture at PHIX is what I like the most about the company. We are quite a close team. It’s easy to approach each other for help or for spare time activities like sport.”
When she is not playing tennis or hiking through forests, Chunting likes to create videos about her experiences of living in Europe. “At the beginning, after I moved to Germany, many people were asking me how I was adjusting. It was difficult to find a doctor, fix things in the house and to make friends. But I did my best and solved one problem at a time. I didn’t want to repeat my story every time, so I decided to make videos about it and post them for everyone to see.”
And there is a lot to share, adds Chunting. “There were certainly culture shocks. In China, people aren’t as direct as here, but I think it is good to know what is wrong and how you can fix it. In China, there also isn’t as much separation between work and private life. In Europe, your colleagues and your friends are two separate things.”
Luckily, that isn’t necessarily the case at PHIX where, Chunting says, she fit in easily from the start. “The culture at PHIX is what I like the most about the company. We are quite a close team. It’s easy to approach each other for help or for spare time activities like sport. It’s a very international company and everyone is very open to different cultures.”
Are you interested in a career at PHIX?
As a rapidly growing integrated photonics packaging foundry we are always looking for new talent. Even if our current job openings aren’t an exact fit, we are eager to meet promising candidates who are experienced in photonics.
