Qualcomm
Cambridge
I spent my 6-month placement at Qualcomm's Cambridge office, working as part of a team that designs the hardware inside some of Qualcomm's leading products. I got to take a engineering project from start to finish - designing, testing, and solving a specific technical challenge - and presenting my findings back to the team. I designed a useful piece of hardware that will be used in upcoming products. I also spent time in the lab alongside senior engineers, getting hands-on experience with how designs are tested and validated in practice.
At Qualcomm, for my first three months, I joined the RFA (Radio Frequency Analogue) design team, where my primary deliverable was the design, simulation, and verification of a very high performance, low dropout, voltage regulator from scratch. I took full ownership of this project - from the initial schematic through to full verification of the final block - and delivered it to completion across all required operating conditions. Alongside this, I was tasked with researching a solution to a weakness of the regulator topology I had designed. I developed some theoretical analysis of the problem, and discussed a practical solution, which I presented back to the team. My remaining three months were spent in the RF lab, assisting senior engineers with the measurement and characterisation of a component on a test chip, giving me valuable exposure to the experimental side of the design flow. I also contributed to Qualcomm's university partnership program by developing a project for the Arduino Uno Q.
Working within the analogue design team required me to apply and extend my existing circuit design skills. I used industry-standard design software (Cadence Virtuoso) to build and simulate circuits, verifying their behaviour across a wide range of operating conditions. I also developed skills in circuit analysis, both through simulations and through deriving theoretical results by hand. I was able to successfully apply these to solve a specific design problem, delivering a working solution to the team. In the RF lab, I continued to build on my existing experience using electronics testing equipment. I also began using specialised test equipment for the characterisation of commercial radio systems, which was very interesting.
Throughout my placement I conducted myself in accordance with the standards expected of a practising engineer. I took full ownership of my design, meeting weekly with my manager to report progress honestly, including openly acknowledging when a result had deviated from expected values or when a decision needed revisiting. I adhered to Qualcomm's internal workflows for design review and sign-off, ensuring all results were well documented, theoretically backed, and traceable. As the most junior member of staff, I contributed meaningfully to my team by asking well-prepared questions, flagging anomalies, and holding my ground during technical debates when I had the theoretical backing to do so. I treated all proprietary information with appropriate confidentiality, and learnt more about the laws regarding intellectual property. I also got to practice many skills that are useful in the corporate world, such as presenting, time management and teamworking.