Digital IC Design - end of year review

Caroline Pye (Senior Recruitment Consultant) and her colleague Clare O'Brien (Recruitment Consultant) recently wrote the following newsletter for their contacts in the Digital IC Design community.
 
The Merry (aka Wet and Windy) Month of December is nearly upon us! I thought this would be a good time to send an update to everyone in our Most Excellent and Revered Digital IC design community. Hopefully this is helpful – any comments or questions would be most welcome.

1. Highest Demand Since 2008

There has been a significant increase in the number of companies seeking new digital IC design and verification engineers over the last three months, from an already busy baseline. The average number of requirements within companies has also grown – for example one company in three is seeking at least five engineers. Please see below for specific details, covering UK, Europe and Far East – you’ll note that there are very few locations where engineers aren’t in high demand!
 
UK

South West

• Principal ASIC Designer – Communications
• Digital ASIC Lead / Manager – new design group, wireless space
• Digital ASIC Design Engineers – MULTIPLE! 2-20 years experience. Graphics / Video / Comms / Processor / Power management
• Senior FPGA Designers – Video encoding/decoding (MPEG, H264 etc)
• Junior ASIC Design Engineers – MULTIPLE! Grads in high demand to 3 years experience
• ASIC Verification Engineers – Senior / Principal, global brand
• Physical Design Engineers – Senior role, high level of technical challenge
• Physical Design/IC Layout Lead – established IC consultancy

Thames Valley

• Graduate VLSI Engineers – FPGA, Networks, famous global firm
• Graduate Hardware Design Engineers – ASIC/FPGA, superb telecoms company
• Senior SoC FPGA Design Engineer – Berkshire
• Senior ASIC Verification Engineers – Berkshire, SystemVerilog, OVM
• Digital ASIC Design/Verification Engineer – wireless, SystemVerilog
• Physical Design / Implementation Engineers – Several! RTL-GDSII, rapidly growing firm

Home Counties

• Graduate ASIC Design Engineers – lots!  Video / Graphics / wireless connectivity
• Digital Research Engineers – computer arithmetic, datapath design, mathematical operations in silicon – considerable challenge
• Senior ASIC/FPGA Design Engineers – several! Video coding / Networks / Multimedia
• Physical Design Engineers – from graduate up to around 7 years exp, leading UK firm
• Principal SoC Video Architect – H.264, HEVC

Cambridge

• RTL Design Engineers – MANY! From 2-20 years experience. Graphics, Video, wireless -  Blue chip and start-up.
• ASIC Verification Lead – high-speed Ethernet networks
• ASIC Verification Engineers – Yes please! Senior & Principal level, Graphics
• FPGA Hardware Designers - highly dynamic high-tech company specialising in electronics and software – superb technical challenge

Midlands / North

• Senior ASIC/FPGA Design Engineer – URGENT - Manchester - Networks/data storage
• RTL Design Engineers – Midlands - image processing, 2-20 years experience (multiple)
• Principal ASIC Design Lead / Manager – Midlands - ultra high speed network products
• Principal Physical Design Engineer – Midlands
• Senior ASIC Verification Engineer – Sheffield, processors

Scotland

• Principal Digital Chip Design – Edinburgh, Audio
• Physical Design Engineers – Edinburgh, 3-10 years experience

Northern Ireland

• Digital ASIC/FPGA Design Engineers – Belfast, 2-10 years experience, VHDL

EUROPE
Eire

• ASIC/FPGA Designers, 2-10 years experience, Cork
• Principal ASIC Design Engineers - (x2) Limerick
• RTL Design Engineer – award-winning fabless semis company, Dublin 

Austria 

• Senior DSP Digital Designs (x2) – Automotive sector. Lovely location!
• Physical Design Engineers – URGENT - junior and senior
• Digital ASIC Design Engineers – several! Junior and senior, power management

Germany 

• Munich - Senior Digital Design Engineers – IN DEMAND!
• Munich - System Architect – Munich, digital power management products
• Munich - FPGA Hardware Engineer – German speaker
• Munich - Senior / Lead Digital Verification Engineer - huge growth prospects
• Stuttgart - Digital Design Engineers – yes please, microcontrollers and power management
• Southern German border – Digital IC Designer – ideally with microprocessor experience

Scandinavia 

• Sweden – ASIC/FPGA Designers – Several! Video processing, superb global firm
• Sweden – RTL Design Engineers – junior and senior, wireless comms.
• Norway – Principal SoC Verification Expert
• Norway – Principal ASIC Graphics Designer

Spain 

• Seville - Digital Physical Design Engineers – sunny location, fantastic city
• Seville - Front-end ASIC Designers – RTL Design, CMOS camera technology
• Madrid – Digital ASIC Design and Verification Engineers – Several! Spanish start-up

FAR EAST 

• Malaysia - Physical Design Engineers – LOTS! Place & Route skills please,  2-10 years
• Malaysia - Digital ASIC Verification Engineers – 2-10 years experience
• Malaysia – Engineering Director - Kuala Lumpur
• Taiwan – Senior/Lead DFT Engineer - 3D IC technology

2. Demand Drivers

After the wireless revolution of the last decade, a number of new trends / technologies are driving this demand for cutting-edge skills:

• Ultra low power devices are sought for long-battery-life connectivity in areas such as The Internet of Things (the IoT) and remote healthcare monitoring.
• The evolution of SoCs to include a greater proportion of GPUs over CPUs is a development that will influence architectural design over the coming years.
• The need for higher processing power at lower power consumption is keenly felt by networking companies, as more and more information is stored in the Cloud (is that why we’re having record levels of rainfall??).
• The Connected Home (and the potential business models associated with in-home connectivity) is an area of great potential in terms of innovation / new business models.
• The ever-increasing integration of electronics within cars is also driving demand for robust designs (note that we foresee a trend over the coming years of car manufacturers bringing electronics design engineers in house, rather than relying on third party suppliers – though whether this will extend to IC design remains to be seen).

3. UK and European Skills Shortage

The skills demand also results from a chronic lack of enrolment in technical degrees over the last number of years. Different European countries are dealing with this in different ways. In our opinion the UK’s current immigration policy is working against the industry and cutting the skills supply to certain companies, thus forcing them to set up elsewhere and/or restricting their ability to compete internationally. The restriction / uncertainty on graduate immigration is particularly concerning - the students who pay good money to study in the UK / Europe are no longer allowed to stay and work at the companies who desperately need them! This seems illogical, as graduates are most likely to establish a life here and become important contributors to the industry (and the exchequer!) for many years to come.You may feel this as a controversial view, and I’d be happy to hear your own opinions. Neil Dickins, one of IC Resources’ founders, has been asked to sit on a UK Border Agency advisory board. We’re keen to represent the views of the industry and would like to hear from as many people as possible. FYI the industry is waking up to the skills shortage. Two interesting programmes of many:

NMI’s skills foundation www.ukesf.org and Teen Tech www.teentechevent.com

4. Increased Recommendation Scheme

This skills shortage means that your help in identifying new people is of course all the more valuable. I hope that any recommendations come from goodwill, in that you believe we’ll provide a valuable and professional service to the person you recommend to us. Nonetheless it seems right that we should say “thank you” in a more concrete way than just saying “thank you”! Therefore we’re currently happy to extend our recommendation scheme from £500 pounds to £1000 pounds, depending on the seniority of the person recommended.

5. Next Year

Recent economic news seems mixed, but given the points mentioned above we’re hopeful that there will still be plenty of hiring next year within the European digital IC design and verification community. From what I understand, there are also blue chip companies and investment groups sitting on significant funds, so who knows, it might also be a better year for start ups and SMEs. Fingers crossed……..

…..and in the meantime, all the best for the rest of this year. I hope you enjoy a well deserved break and festive holiday season (in just 3 weeks time!). I’d be very happy to hear from you with any updates on how you’re doing, or with any questions / comments about this newsletter, or the market in general.

All the best,

Caroline Pye (and Clare O’Brien, your very own Verification Recruitment Specialist)

PS The IC Group has launched mobile websites….see www.ic-resources.com