Building a Career as a Hardware Engineer 101 | ft. VLSI Educator and Entrepreneur Kunal Ghosh

Our guest for today is Educator and Entrepreneur Kunal Ghosh. Kunal is a co-founder of the Semiconductor EdTech company VLSI System Design(https://www.vlsisystemdesign.com/), a platform to educate students and young professionals to build careers in hardware engineering. The company was founded back in 2011, a brainchild of Kunal and his peers from IIT Bombay, where he pursued an MTech in VLSI and microelectronics. With a focus on back-end design, they've created a learning hub using open-source EDA tools that mirrors the complexity faced in today's chip design industry. Their team has successfully guided over 90,000 individuals, many of whom have advanced to prominent positions within the sector.

Kunal has been working in the VLSI and hardware design industry for more than a decade, taking on the role of Physical Design engineer at Qualcomm and Lead Application Engineer at Cadence systems. In this episode, he speaks about what it takes to bridge the gap between academic instruction and finding your break in the physical design industry, effective strategies to crack hardware engineering interviews, building impactful projects, why and where to pursue an MS/M.tech in Hardware and more.

02:30 - Why Hardware Design Engineering
05:40 - Opportunities for Hardware Design Engineers
09:35 - His preparation for Qualcomm
12:45 - Relevant Projects for scoring a job as a Hardware Engineer
14:38 - Entrepreneurship
19:44 - Masters' Recommendations / Is it required?
24:00 - Addressing the gap between academics and industry
31:02 - The courses his platform offers
35:34 - Difference between Engineering and Entrepreneurship
37:15 - Advice for interviews
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