with strong analytical and communication skills. Apart from educational degrees,companies are
also interested in the fundamentals.“Ability to understand and pick up is important.It’s not all
work and no play when it comes to a carreer in chip designing. It’s a mixture of cuttingedge work
and fun.
“Learning is a lifelong process and nothing is impossible if you work hard”....
Career path
Career path in this Industry as well defined for aspirants in both, technical and management
function.Typically an engineer takes about 5-6 years to reach the position of a senior Design
Engineer. As the aspirant gains more work enperience by working with different designs.He
canadvance to a leadposition. Post this level,the engineers can decide if he wants to continue in
the technical funtions or more to a management function such as project manager,both of which
are equally fulfilling depending on the inclination.how. quickly you grow depends actively on
your individual ability.You can also branch off and choose to become an expert in a certain
technology; for instance;L2 design, and be a mentor or senior Fellow. As for the salaries in this
industry, a fresher starts off at around 5 lakhs per annuam while a head Engineer generally gets
8-12lakhs.In a few years,one can progress to a project head where 12-20lakhs is the norm and
the sky is the limit (depending on the brand).
“seeing
technologies,you’ve
worked on, being put
into day to day use is
quite an exhilarating
experience!”
Rohit Vidwans
Former Director of
Digital enteprise
group intel India
24
Summing it up
for a successful career in any field,you need to have a special interest in the
subject and a dream to make a difference. chip design is an extremely fulfiling
career option for the technically and technologicaly inclined.The money and
ineractive job offers will follow once you’ve developed .The required skill
sets and gained the exprience. As for the areas to look out for,the general
concern is that chips designed for cosumer electronics is a growth
area.Designing for wireless devices and multi core processor design is bound
to go up too.While integration of MEMS(Micro-Electro-Mechanical
systems)is a growth area that has great applications in the health care and
medical arena.The Engineer from IIT kanpur,who now holds ten design patents to his credit has this final advice for aspirants “keep yourself current
with state of the art in such a fast moving indutry, increase productivity to be
in sync with industry trends, and keeping ahead of the competition hearing
is a lifelong process and nothing is impossible if you work hard”.