How to Prepare for Analog Design Job Profile Interview?

Analog Design is one of the prestigious job sub domain in VLSI. This field deals with the Circuit & layout design of analog circuits. If complex circuit problems excites you, you don’t get bored with analog electronics then this field is for you. It’s not that easy to get into this field. Candidates have to passed various round of exams involving tough set of questions & then that followed by 2-3 interview rounds. Your basics should be extremely strong in order to attempt the questions asked mainly for this job profile.

In this article further we will talk about what analog designers do? What this field is all about? After that we will cover what to study portion for those who want to be an Analog design engineer & in the last segment we will discuss about the companies which hires analog designers & what salary one can expect in India & in abroad.

What Analog Design Engineers Do?

So far in brief we discussed about the analog design field, now let’s understand if you are getting selected as an analog design engineer in any company what kind of responsibilities you will have.

Firstly Analog Design can be divided majorly into 2 segments: (a) Circuit Design Engineer (b) Layout Design Engineer.

Circuit Design Engineer: Analog Circuit designers are those who deals with the circuit part implementation. As a circuit designer your job responsibilities would be to design a circuit from the given specifications. You will have to choose the best architecture in terms of Power, Performance & Area which is also known as PPA in industry. Complex problems would be thrown at you and expectation from you would be come up with solution. This field is challenging but interesting as well. Mostly it’s like working as an Research & Development Engineer.

Layout Design Engineer: Analog Layout designers are supposed to design the layout of those circuits which a circuit designer has designed. Layout Designers need to carefully implement the layout keeping in mind DRC’s. Your layout should be robust enough so that during Post layout simulations circuit designers should not see big change in the behavior or specification of circuit compare to pre-layout phase results. Layout Designers need to make sure whatever metal width they have drawn that should not flag and EM & IR violations. They also need to avoid any latch up formation or antenna issues.

Overall layout design field requires laser sharp focus & good mental toughness to exceed in this field. Having good command over programming languages would be helpful in this field.

Various Job domains: Analog Designers can expect to work in various teams naming few such as PMIC Team (Power Management Integrated Circuit Team), Data Converters Team, Sensors Team, IO Team, SerDes Team, PLL Team and many more.

What to study for Analog Design Job Profile Interview?

As mentioned in the above segment that analog design job profile requires multi round tests and interviews, so as a student you should be aware that what questions can be asked and which subjects you should target.

Most of the core subjects which you studies during your engineering, all are important but here we are mentioning about few specific subjects which you should give utmost priority while preparing for analog design job profile:

• Network Analysis
• Control System
• Basics of Digital Design
• Analog Electronics
• Digital Communication
• VLSI theory
• Signals & Systems
• Basic Maths & Aptitude

These all subjects are important and many times question asked can have mixed concept from various subjects. So neglecting any subject can create a big mess for you during your tests. During the initial round of screening few questions might be asked from Mathematics & Aptitude/Reasoning as well. So keep the basic knowledge of these subjects also. But focus mainly on Network analysis, control system, Analog electronics, Digital communication & signals systems.

Current Mirrors, 2 Stage Op-amp, single stage Op-amps, Transient response analysis, Stability analysis, negative feedback, Fourier transform, Laplace & z transform, RC/RLC/LC Circuit understanding, Phase noise, modulation types, encoding, Differential amplifiers, biasing, network theorems, two port networks these are some of the most important topics for analog design job profile.

List of Companies which hires Analog Designer

Almost all the semiconductor companies hires Analog circuit design engineers and layout design engineer. You will find ample amount of opportunities for this job profile. Not only in India but world wide you can see various job postings for analog design engineers.

In order to get placed into these big tech giants, apart from having command over your core subjects what else matters is how you have drafted your Resume. Resume plays a big role in initial screening as this is what hiring manager sees and based on this one page of document he/she takes a call whether you should proceed for next round or not. So knowing how to draft Resume & what things keep their is very important. At Mosgyan, we already have published an article over Resume. Below is the link for that Article, we highly recommend you to go through that article:

How to create Resume for VLSI jobs?

Expected Salary

Starting salary in this field can vary based on your college and company. In general In India as a fresher you can expect CTC around 12-14 Lakhs. Again it varies company to company, in many companies you can expect decent Stock offerings as well. In startups you can expect a bit lesser base pay itself.

In US as a fresher you can expect average salary for this job profile from $120K-$150K. Along with this some additional pay also you can expect based on your performance or stock offering.

Overall, it’s a lucrative field & you will witness growth in terms of learning & salary both. You will always feel challenged in this field as every year some new tech nodes are getting developed which comes with their own set of problems. So to thrive those problems and come up with the innovative solution is the trademark of this exciting job profile.

In case if you wish to know more analog design work profile, what kind of work an analog designer does, you can consider to watch this video where through an example of temperature sensor design work profile of analog design engineers are explained.