An analogue IC design recruiter
for scarce engineers.

Why analogue engineers are scarce

Analogue design is learned slowly. A graduate can become a useful digital designer within a few years, but a good analogue designer builds intuition over a decade of tape-outs, silicon bring-up and the occasional painful respin. Universities produce fewer of them, digital work pays comparably and attracts more entrants, and the engineers who stayed tend to be deeply committed to their field.

The practical result is a small group of people, most of them employed and many of them well known to each other. An analogue IC design recruiter has to be part of that conversation, because there is no pool to advertise into.

A typical search

A mid-sized company in the Bristol area designed power management and data conversion blocks for industrial customers. Its lead for high-resolution converters was about to retire, and the team had no obvious successor. The company had tried a job board and a general engineering agency. Applications came from digital designers and from test engineers, and one interesting candidate turned out to have worked on the analogue front end of a very different class of product.

We started with a conversation with the retiring lead, who was happy to describe what made a good successor. He talked about switched-capacitor techniques, layout discipline and the habit of asking what a block would do in a bad corner. Joel used that description to speak with designers at converter specialists and at larger mixed-signal houses, asking each about their own work and who they thought was strong.

Those recommendations led to an engineer who had left a large vendor for family reasons and was working in a smaller role below his level. He spent a day with the team, reviewed an existing design and wrote down three weaknesses in it. They were fair ones. He accepted the role, and the outgoing lead spent his last months in a proper handover.

Contract and permanent

Some analogue searches are better served by an interim designer while the permanent hire is found. We recruit for both and will say plainly which fits your programme. An interim designer can keep a tape-out on schedule, and a careful permanent search can then proceed without pressure on the timeline.