The battle for engineering talent in Southern California escalated last week when chip maker Broadcom Ltd. of Irvine accused rocket manufacturer SpaceX of poaching engineers.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. of Hawthorne is accused of soliciting Broadcom’s services only to later decline and then hire away key engineers from the company, according to a lawsuit filed March 23 by Broadcom in Orange County Superior Court.

Broadcom alleges that SpaceX violated a non-disclosure agreement in order “to procure a family of sophisticated, customized computer chips without bearing all of the research and development costs inevitably involved in creating such chips,” according to its lawsuit.

SpaceX denies the allegations and said that Broadcom was one of many vendors it requested proposals from.

“SpaceX reviewed Broadcom’s proposal, but ultimately found it lacking and rejected it,” said a SpaceX spokesman. “SpaceX did not pursue or lure engineers from Broadcom. On the contrary, these engineers reached out to SpaceX anticipating significant layoffs at the Broadcom Irvine location.”

Broadcom last month announced plans to slash 700 workers at its Irvine facilities as part of a nationwide cost-cutting plan.

Technology reporter Garrett Reim can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @garrettreim for the latest in L.A. tech news.