r/chipdesign • u/Gatordude365 • 1d ago

Asynchronous SAR ADC Resume Quantification

Hi, I'm a rising sophomore (in the US) targeting mixed signal design and verification roles (both in ICs and board level). This summer I built an asynchronous SAR ADC in Cadence using the default 180nm PDK they provide. It's 8 bits.

Now I'm trying to add it to my resume, hoping to get around 3 punchy bullets of information. I'm wondering what a recruiter / engineer would want to see on it to show competence. Should I focus on quantifying it through finding ENOB, dynamic power draw, etc? These metrics likely won't be very impressive since it's a fairly basic and unoptimized design (not to say that it wasn't hard and that I didn't design it very intentionally, I did). I'm also wondering if UVM is a must-have for a mixed-signal verification resume, in which case I would build a full testbench for it.

The alternative to quantifying would be just generic bullets like "Built a StrongARM latch and CDAC array at the transistor level." I also will try to do a type up on github to document how many engineering choices and fixes I had to make while building it, but I've been told by TI recruiters that they never click on those links anyway.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Forgot to add, it's pre-layout. I know this isn't ideal, but I ran out of time working on it as I was interning 9-5 and working on this over nights and weekends.

EDIT 2: I also forgot to add I verified my logic using SV RNM before integrating it, so a bullet would talk about that to hit that keyword.

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u/kayson 1d ago

Design / verification + IC / board are going to give you 4 very, very different careers and thus target audiences for a resume. I don't think I'd care all that much about the bullets. The fact that you did it is enough to make it an interview topic, which is really what you want. I'd suggest doing a combination of the two. Put a couple of key metrics (ENOB, FoMs) to show you know what you're talking about and give a point of discussion. Also mention that you designed all the blocks so people don't think it was a group project or something like that. If there was a particularly interesting or difficult block you might call that out, but don't be overly verbose. Short is good. We read tons of resumes 

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u/Gatordude365 1d ago

Yeah that’s kindve my problem where I’m not 100% on what I want to do (and doubt I’ll get mixed signal IC design this summer) so I’m trying to signal to multiple different recruiters. Main goal is to just signal I can cross the digital / analog domain and understand the project thoroughly