FPGA and ASIC design as a field is very vast. Tool sets cost high and once a company invests in an ecosystem, they generally don’t switch. In such a case, if yo

FPGA and ASIC design as a field is very vast. Tool sets cost high and once a company invests in an ecosystem, they generally don’t switch. In such a case, if you showcase your expertise with say ALTERA at a company that uses Xilinx, it may not come across as impressive to those looking to fill in a new spot. I think it’s better to keep your feet in non hardware fields if you want to be sure of getting a job as the first thing. To continue in FPGA/ASIC design, I’d suggest you do a MS degree in a US university in a location that has a lot of chip design industries (I’d guess Bay Area, Texas), because that’s where you can have a good chance of getting an internship and that’s going to be your foot in the door, to start a career in the field of FPGA/ASIC design. Getting an internship is very very crucial if you want to get started with a career in hardware engineering since the situation is similar in US also, where you need to hit the ground running from day 1. With an internship/co-op it becomes much easier since they give you some slack because you are a student . Whatever you do, dont just get stuck in the cess pool of IT Services jobs in India, because your friends in those fields have magnificent titles and pay. If you get to work on a product at a product company, great. But orherwise for someone like you IMO a graduate degree in the US is the best bet. (I’m from b’luru, did grad course in FPGA Design in the US and later switched to s/w dev because I was not awesome at h/w)