Need advice on career in Embedded Systems field

[the moon is back]

Dear Members,

I have an Engineering Degree in Electronics and Communication(2013 passed out) and i am very much interested in embedded system field. I have knowledge of 8051 micro-controller, 8085 and 8086 microprocessors, familiar with KIEL simulator, designed projects using 89C51 micro-controller and have knowledge of interfacing such as motors, sensors. On the software side, i know C programming, assembly language programming, have basic knowledge about operating system.

Since i am a fresher, is these skills are enough to start career in embedded system field, what other skills are required to join an Embedded System company.
Please guide me.



Thank you.

 

[HMS1021]

These skills will certainly get you started, you may want to expand a bit into ARM-3/4 and then into 7 and 9. Also the various smart phone OSs.

For decades I managed large design organizations within major aerospace companies and now consult for companies large and small, especially start-ups. The skills that were, and still are, very difficult to find fall into several categories:

Embedded device / host interface - While it is easy to find designers for the device side (c code or asm on a MCU of some type) and programmers on the host side (Window, Linux, etc with C/C++, JAVA, etc) what is very hard to find is someone that can design a device AND the device drivers and interfaces that run on the host. Especially if the data rate is high and time critical. When we interview and describe the task as "we need a hardware device that can take 80MB/s of ADC data with a time stamp, stream it to a PC running either Windows 7, or Linuxt, define the shared memories, configure everything via XML, and control it and display the data from a GUI that is also accessible via Ethernet". I forgot to mention thinning the data by using a GPU. We get hardware developers, firmware coders, host coders, and network types. I have only seen 4-6 people out of hundreds that could tackle the problem as an end to end system. These people are paid a lot and never out of work. It's not that we are cheap and want one person to do the work of 6. We want a end to end solution without the grief of 6 people muddling for months over the various interfaces to take even more months to work out the bugs, which is what we most often do. End to end may be too hard but I suggest some overlap will keep you in demand.

The other area is the DSP / MATLAB simulation / FPGA including soft cores / processor interfaces. This is another area where you can get people with the individual skills but once again those that understand the end to end problem are few, well paid, and very much in demand.

Over the decades I have seen most engineers focus on a narrow niche and have little interest in the next level. The most you know what the system needs the better you can sell what you do....

 

[the moon is back]

Thank you HMS1021 for your valuable advice. I understood that there's more need and demand for people who work at system level with end to end system solution. But as i am fresher with an Engg. Degree, i need some skills which can fetch me a entry level job in Embedded Systems Design, once i get experience i can move further. so i can you suggests me any of the courses/skills and which can place me in a Embedded industry.

Thank you

 

[shoaibshakeel381]

I am also a fresh Electronics and Communication Engineer. I am currently trying to start a career in embedded systems.
These are few skills i am pursuing:
- Coldfire, Microchip, 8051, MIPS, ARM Processor Architectures
- Knowledge of various I/O interfaces e.g. RS232, RS485, RS422, CAN, Ethernet, USB, Serial, Parallel, I2C
- Real Time Operating Systems (RTOS), like uCOS III, freeOS etc
- System on Chip, FPGA Prototyping etc
- Computer Architecture and Organization
- Strong concepts of C/C++ (embedded C)
- Socket Programming in C
- Embedded Linux
- Firmware Development
- Compiling applications in Linux environment using Makefiles etc.
- Hands on experince of using GCC compiler and GDB debugger
- Interrupt based programming in Linux
- Capability to develop Multi-Threaded applications in Linux
- Different embedded IDEs like CodeWarrior, Renesas HEW, Keil, MPLAB

Also there are many sub-fields in Embedded Systems so you might want to go to programming side or Hardware design side. Your skills will depend on your choice.

 

[the moon is back]

Thank you shoaibshakeel381, skills that you mentioned are very much useful and valuable which can surely give start in Embedded systems field. But how do you pursuing these skills, i mean are you doing any courses to learn all these, or are there any freewares or open sources available to learn? kindly reply.

Thank you.