Chip designers
Engineers who design and check the logic of a chip before it is made, in languages such as Verilog and SystemVerilog, for custom chips or for FPGAs, and where in India they are hired.
What this role isThe skills it needs
The skills at a glance
Verilog
SystemVerilog
VHDL
FPGA
ASIC
Job posts for this role ask most for Verilog, SystemVerilog and VHDL, the languages that describe a chip's logic, with FPGA and ASIC as the two kinds of chip, EDA tools from companies such as Cadence, and SoC, PCIe, ARM and RISC-V as the designs and interfaces the work involves. Many also ask for C/C++, for the models and tests around the design. The full story of what each skill is used for is on the skills page.
Where chip designers are hired
A chip designer designs the chip itself, before it is made. The work comes in a few kinds, designing the logic, checking it by simulation, which is called verification, and fitting the design onto an FPGA or into a custom chip. Embedded firmware engineers write the software that runs on the chip once it exists, and C/C++ systems engineers write the drivers and tools around it. Chip design is a small, specialist role, and almost all of it is at product companies, in the chip makers and the networking companies that build their own chips. The design-services firms take on chip work for these companies, and staffing firms are a common route in. It is a senior role, and most of its few junior openings are at the chip-design tool makers and the processor makers, such as Cadence and NVIDIA.
Product companies
Among product companies, chip designers are hired almost only in Semiconductors and chip design and in the networking companies that design their own chips. All of them are B2B.
Cadence and Synopsys, which build chip design software (EDA), are the largest employers of chip designers in India (who they hire). Their engineers build and test the design tools that every other chip company depends on, and they take juniors more readily than most chip employers. AMD, NVIDIA, Intel and Altera, processor and GPU makers, design CPUs, GPUs and FPGAs. Arm, the best known of the semiconductor IP companies, sells designs rather than finished chips, so verification is the core of its work. Sandisk, Micron and Western Digital design memory and storage-controller chips, mostly with senior engineers.
Several other chip makers hire designers too. Texas Instruments, Infineon, Analog Devices and Microchip, which are analog, power and microcontroller chipmakers, make chips for cars, factories and devices, and they take juniors more readily than most. Marvell, Skyworks and Broadcom design networking and wireless chips. Keysight, GlobalFoundries and KLA hire for FPGA design inside test instruments and for design support at the foundry. Tenstorrent, Graphcore and d-Matrix, which are AI chip start-ups, hire a few senior verification engineers.
The networking companies are the other hiring hotspot. Lattice Semiconductor makes networking and telecom chips, and chip design is almost everything it hires for in India, in its purest FPGA form. Cisco and Arista Networks, which make enterprise networking equipment, design FPGAs and custom chips for their switches and routers. HPE and Dell hire a few for FPGA and board design in their servers.
Big tech
Big tech hires few chip designers in India. Google has a handful of openings for its own chips, such as the TPU. Amazon, Microsoft and Apple hardly hire any here.
Services firms
In the services world, chip designers work for chip-company clients, mostly on verification and FPGA work. The design-services firms where the work is hardware, cars and chips, like L&T Technology Services, ACL Digital, LeadSoc Technologies and Tessolve, hire chip designers more heavily than any other services firms (who they hire). Among the IT services giants, IBM designs its own processors, and Capgemini, TCS and Wipro run chip-services practices for clients. UST and Happiest Minds hire a few. Accenture hardly hires any. More on all of them is in the services world's embedded and chip hiring.
GCCs
The GCCs hardly hire chip designers. There are only a handful of openings, at Tesla, SLB and Arrow Electronics. More on this is in the GCCs' other roles.
Staffing firms and hiring platforms
The staffing companies, like Best NanoTech, Mulya Technologies, Whitefield Careers and Zigsaw, are specialist chip-design recruiters that place engineers at chip companies, a route used widely in this field (who they hire). The hiring platforms offer no remote chip-design work to speak of.
Where chip design is rarely hired
Chip designers are rarely hired outside the chip makers and the networking companies. Business software, finance, health, commerce and media companies hire none, the GCCs and Accenture hardly any, and most of big tech very few.
Roles next door
Embedded firmware engineers write the software that runs on the chips that chip designers make.
C/C++ systems engineers write the drivers and tools that work with the chip.
Test engineers who specialise in embedded testing check the finished hardware and its software.
Terms used on this page
Verilog and SystemVerilog Languages that describe a chip's logic, used to design it and to check it by simulation.
Verification Checking a chip design by simulation before it is made, to find mistakes while they are still cheap to fix.
FPGA A chip whose logic can be programmed after it is made.
ASIC A custom chip designed for one job and made in a factory.
EDA Electronic design automation. The software tools used to design chips, made by companies such as Cadence and Synopsys.
B2B Business to business. A company that sells software or services to other companies.
GCC Global capability centre. A global company's own engineering centre in India, building software for its parent.
Last updated October 2026.