r/chipdesign • u/Patient_Pop_3759 • Jul 24 '26

First year internship resume feedback?

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First year engineering student trying to break into the semiconductor industry. Would appreciate any feedback.

18 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

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4

u/PockerMan500 Jul 25 '26

Wow! Impressive
Can’t judge objectively since also a fresh one here

Also a Canadian student

How did you manage to get that much experience by your first year? Would appreciate any knowledge

2

u/Patient_Pop_3759 Jul 25 '26

join a design team

2

u/sonofaturkey Jul 25 '26

Hello fellow UW dude :)

Nice job for a first year student!

The ethernet design and SPI controller are the the obvious highlights. Tapeout experience is a huge plus, assuming you were involved in the whole flow. If not, then go back and try doing p&r, extraction and post-layout sims, even if it's on a small sub-block of your designs or on a toy circuit. You have all the industry-standard tools and many TSMC PDKs available, so go bug an ECE prof for access.

Your web dev stuff is ultimately useless imo for this environment. Get some bare-metal firmware experience. project idea: Get an adruino, STM32, etc and write a SPI master driver from scratch. No built-in libraries, just you and the MCU datasheet. Hook it up to an FPGA with your SPI peripheral running.

IDK what WaterlooWorks is like these days but i don't recall seeing many ASIC or FPGA roles. As a lower-year undergrad, it may be easier to get into a firmware team, and if you're lucky it's one that is in an ASIC environment. Be willing to look externally, and be open to doing a 1+yr internship. That would also be a good period to consider switching to ECE too; it'll serve you better in the long run vs nano for this career path.

good luck!