My journey from internship to engineer
Abir Houdair, Morocco
When I started my journey looking for potential internships I had to consider both my interests and what I have experience in. Since my first year in college I had big interest in physical design and knew it was something I wanted to take further in my career, however I didn’t want to give up scripting in the popular programmable languages as I know they are widely used and would be good for me to grow my skills in. When I found Sondrel I was pleasantly surprised that they offer both the opportunity to work on physical design projects as well as R&D initiatives in which I’ll get the chance to program with Python, PHP and Bash. For me it was a no brainer, so I applied along with many other keen aspiring engineers and indeed, I got the best of both worlds: physical design and scripting!
Before I joined Sondrel I thought there would be certain expectations around how I’m expected to complete my work and the working hours I had to follow. Although there is a working policy, I had a lot more flexibility in how I chose to work, what language to use and what changes to implement to the initial specifications document of my internship subject. This kind of work environment meant I was able to follow my interests and grow my skills in the areas that I wanted to without being fixed to one thing. I felt supported in what I wanted to do and encouraged to try new things which allowed me to be pushed out of my comfort zone. It also gave me variety in my work and kept it really interesting as I was learning new things all the time.
Through my internship and working with a really supportive team of engineers I’ve learnt about the various tools used in designing ASICs, I got to familiarize myself with Linux environment, and I got to continuously improve my skills in Bash, TCL, Python, and more. Eventually after my 6 month internship and studies were over Sondrel offered me a permanent role as a Physical Design Engineer and I was thrilled. Along side 5 other interns I joined Sondrel full time and I am now expanding my skill set and hope to progress quickly up the career ladder.
What I like most about working here is the flexibility in completing tasks, and the flexible working policy. We are trusted to do our work in our own time scales within reason and this really motivates me to want to do a better job as I’m not being micromanaged. The culture is friendly and we have good tasks planification/management and I feel that my privacy is respected. We have a healthy work life balance which gives me the time to socialise with friends and family and also have time for myself where I can recharge without thinking about work.
After becoming an Engineer, I had the opportunity to work on a 5nm block as part of my training, and I’m currently working on R&D initiatives using Python and Bash.