Electronics Engineering - As a career option

Electronics engineers are people who deal with electronic devices, right from their design to their production and maintenance. One of newest additions to the discipline of engineering, the advent of electronics has not only throttled humankind’s knowledge, and capabilities to new horizons, they have also revolutionized everyday life.

From credit cards to thermometers, electronics are ubiquitous. Even that fire alarm in your house is probably based on electronic circuits that are controlled by the radioactive decay of Americium-241!

Electronics Engineers are, hence, in great demand. The global scenario of electronic devices is changing fast, arguably faster than any other field (modern information technology, a direct consequence of electronics engineering, is a competitor).

Hence, while most mechanical or chemical engineers often find that companies tend to avoid the risk of adopting radical design changes, electronics engineers are valued precisely because of their ability to think out of the box. You can say that the present time is the sweet spot of electronics as a discipline.

Is Electronics Engineering different from Electrical Engineering?

No, but yes!

As far as academics are concerned, many foreign universities call electronics a subset of electrical engineering, and they do have a point: both deal with the movement of current.

However, in India, it is more common for electronics to be distinguished heavily and this too is not unreasonable: electronics are different from electrical devices in that they usually deal with much smaller current.

Also, electrical devices like light-bulbs and motors are “passive”: they are influenced by the current, but don’t have the ability to influence the current passing through them.

On the other hand, electronic devices such as diodes and transistors are “active” devices that can make decisions – sometimes extremely complex ones! How cool is that?!

How to Become an Electronics Engineer?

Because the charm of electronics lies in the fact that it can blend into a number of other streams, electronics courses are often clubbed with others. It is common to find colleges offering “Electronics and Telecommunication engineering” or “Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering” or “Electrical and Electronics Engineering” as streams.

This is good news because it implies that at the end of your undergraduate degree, not only will you be a graduate, you’ll also have a specialization!

Because of the discipline’s demand and promise, getting into a good electronics program in India is a challenging task. You’ll have to get your act together and study hard through your high school years if you want to crack any of the numerous Engineering Entrance Exams that are carried out annually in India.

Quite naturally, you are required to have a knack for mathematics and reasoning.

Fortunately, the largest hurdle is to crack the entrance: once you’re in a top B.Tech in Electronics Engineering course in the country, nobody can stop you from reaching the skies.

Colleges typically encourage students to participate in research, development, or design activities that aim at stimulating their capacity for innovation, so with any luck, by the time you pass out of college, you’ll be ready to take the industry head-on.

One thing that you ought to know, is that while most undergraduate engineers choose among industry, research, and academia (M.tech or PhD) after their graduation, electronics engineers usually have a fourth option open to them – entrepreneurship.

This is so because business ventures that deal with the design of electronic devices are often possible with relatively little start-up capital!

Eligibility Criteria to Become an Electronics Engineer

+2: Students should have taken science and scored at least 60% aggregate

Bachelor’s Degree: B.Tech in Electronics Engineering

Master’s Degree: M.Tech and PhD in Electronics Engineering (optional)

A Day in the Life of an Electronics Engineer

Hello there! I’m an electronics engineer who specializes in the testing of computer hardware. Since my graduation three years ago, I have worked for two different multi-national corporations that manufacture various forms of computer hardware.

Has a computer ever told you that a driver or a USB drive you just plugged in is “not compatible” with its configuration?

Well, it’s my job to ensure that these things don’t happen – at least, not if you’re using a Graphics Card from my company.

I work for a top hardware firm as a Quality Assurance Engineer. Come along for a closer look at what I do. My name is X, by the way.

9:00 AM: I reach work and pour myself a cup of coffee while I wait for our team manager to brief us the day’s agenda.

10:00 AM: Exciting news! A much-debated rumour of the company fabricating its new flagship GPU is true. Samples of the flagship have just arrived at our facility and I’ll be part of the team that tests it!

The GPU are fabricated using an all-new fabrication technology known as 14-nm FinFET. In essence, this means smaller size, faster runs, and energy efficiency. Drool!

My job in the project is to ensure that Pascal’s specs and performance makes it compatible with Windows OS. Because our largest customer demographic uses Windows PCs, and because Microsoft tends to frown upon hardware that it has not directly classified to be suitable, this is a very important step in hardware development.

1:00 PM: I sit back at my desk and re-check the required specifications of the WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs – the people who certify our hardware). It’s pretty extensive and detailed, but I’m in no hurry.

It’s important to select the correct system specifications before the hardware can be tested to their standards, and mistakes at this stage might cost time.

3:00 PM: My team members and I meet for a quick discussion on the time scale of the testing over a cup of tea. The next few days are going to be devoted to setting up the system and the apparatus required for the testing to begin.

Unexpectedly though, Z, one of my colleagues, has brought with him a log file generated by a 3-way SLI bridge we tested only last week. It’s not good, and if the device is dispatched for testing, it’ll be rejected, costing us time and money.

4:00 PM: Everyone in the team is crouched over a 40” desktop screen perusing the source code of the driver of a relatively old GPU. The SLI bridge that’s giving us trouble is, for some reason, malfunctioning when used with this specific model and we have no idea why.

That isn’t surprising – none of us is hardware developers – but one has to be sure that there indeed is a design problem before sending the device back to the developers.

6:00 PM: The bridge is indeed in need of a second look from the developers. I contact our team leader and inform them of the new development (right on time to stop its test logs from being sent for rating!). It’s going to come back to us in the next few months.

7:00 PM: Fortunately, our slight struggle with the precarious SLI bridge hasn’t numbed our enthusiasm about the Pascal! Before we leave, we decide to break in the GPUs by putting them through an overnight test.

We are done for the day, but neither I nor the rest of them can wait to see the test logs tomorrow morning!

Did you find this article interesting? Was it helpful? Electronics Engineering is one of the most opted profession nowadays. Have your say in the comment box below! Enjoy Reading!