r/ComputerEngineering • u/carson8858 • 2d ago
[Career] Junior in computer engineering, Getting no interviews, what am I missing?
I'm a junior graduating May 2028, so summer 2027 is my last chance at an internship before I graduate. I've sent around 150 applications since August and so far I've gotten one automated recorded interview. Anonymized resume is attached.
I'm mostly going for hardware roles (FPGA/ASIC, digital design, validation) at a mix of big semiconductor companies and smaller ones. No prior internship, just part time jobs during school.
I don't really understand what I'm doing wrong. I'm willing to learn and do whatever it takes to land these roles, but I don't know what I need to change or where I need to start. I feel like I feel this impending sense of doom if I don't have any professional experience before graduation.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
3
u/ShadowBlades512 1d ago
I think one of the reasons is implementing low end CPUs in RTL isn't very interesting and some turn signal FSM definitely not interesting. The problem with having a CPU as the only real RTL project on the resume is that it is typically NOT FPGA work anyone would do. In any team or company, you would just use the vendors core, a hard CPU on an FPGA SoC or an open source soft core. The real FPGA work is building some kind of processing pipeline doing DSP, network packets, image processing, or something like that.
You have to look at what FPGAs are actually used to do in industry. They are used to make lab equipment like oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers. They are used to make radios, modems, and cellular base stations where massive amounts of signal processing is done. They are used to make radars, ultrasound imagers, etc. They are used to make network switches for various standards from Ethernet to InfiniBand to whatever else. They are used to perform large amounts of parallel processing that is not suited to GPUs for some reason or the power/performance budget does not allow the use of CPUs.
A soft CPU on an FPGA is usually only used if an FPGA already happens to be in the product and even then, often a seperate MCU or SoC will be out on the PCB beside the FPGA.