Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?

Depends if you're looking at startups/scaleups or the big companies. Arm, Imagination Tech, etc. for a very long time did not pay anything like as well (even if you were doing software work for them). That's shifted a lot in the UK in recent years (can't speak for the rest of the world). Even so, I hear Intel and AMD still pay lower base salary than you might get at a rival startup.

As for startups/scaleups, I can testify from experience that you'll get the following kind of base salaries in the UK outside of hardware-for-finance companies (not including options/benefits/etc.). Note that my experience is around CPU, GPU, AI accelerators, etc. - novel stuff, not just incrementing the version number of a microcontroller design:

* Graduate modelling engineer (software): £50k - £55k * Graduate hardware design engineer: £45k - £55k

* Junior software engineer: £60k - £70k * Junior hardware engineer: £60k - £70k

* Senior/lead software engineer (generalist; 3+ yoe): £75k - £90k * Senior compiler engineer (3+ yoe): £100k - £120k * Senior/lead hardware design engineer: £90k - £110k * Senior/lead hardware verification engineer: £100k - £115k

* Staff engineering salaries (software, hardware, computer architecture): £100k - £130k and beyond * Principal, director, VP, etc. engeering salaries: £130k+ (and £200k to £250k not unreasonable expectation for people with 10+ years experience).

If you happen to be in physical design with experience on a cutting edge node: £250k - £350k (except at very early stage ventures)

Can you find software roles that pay more? Sure, of course you can. AI and Data Science roles can sometimes pay incredible salaries. But are there that many of those kinds of roles? I don't know - I think demand in hardware design outstrips availability in top-end AI roles, but maybe I'm wrong.

From personal experience, I've been paid double-digits percentage more being a computer architect in hardware startups than I have in senior software engineering roles in (complex) SaaS startups (across virtual conferencing, carbon accounting, and autonomous vehicle simulations). That's very much a personal journey and experience, so I appreciate it's not a reflection of the general market (unlike the figures I quoted above) so of course others will have found the opposite.

To get a sense of the UK markets for a wide range of roles across sectors and company sizes, I recommend looking at salary guides from the likes of: * IC Resources * SoCode * Microtech * Client-Server

Oh by the way, I agree, NDAs all the time, and many of the tools are super user-unfriendly. There's quite a bit of money being made in developing better tools.

As for a list of companies, in the UK or with a UK presence, the following come to mind: Graphcore, Fractile, Olix, Axelera, Codasip, Secqai, PQShield, Vaire, SCI Semiconductor and probably also look at Imagination Tech, AMD and Arm. There are many other companies of different sizes in the UK, these are just the ones that popped into my head in the moment tonight.

[Please note: I am not commenting on actual salaries paid by any of these companies, but if you went looking, I think you'd find roles that offer competitive compensation. My other comments mentioning salaries are based on salary guides I read at the end of last year, as well as my own experience paying people in my previous hardware startup up to May 2025 (VyperCore).]

Hardware is artificially underpaid work, good positions are sparse in the US, and generally most engineers end up in niche coding environments.

Most people that land a successful long career, also refuse to solve some clown firms ephemeral problems at a loss. The trend of externalizing costs onto perspective employees starts to fail in difficult fields requiring actual domain talent with $3.7m per seat equipment. Regulatory capture also fails in advanced areas, as large firms regress into state sponsored thievery instead.

Advice to students that is funny and accurate =3

"Mike Monteiro: F*ck You, Pay Me"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U

> The fact that there are comments misunderstanding the article, that are talking about PCB Design rather than (Silicon) Chip Design, speaks to the problem facing the chip industry. Total lack of wider awareness and many misunderstandings.

No, there is no misunderstanding. Even the US companies mentioned _in the very article_ that have both software and "chip design" roles (however you call it) will pay more to their software engineers. I have almost never heard of anyone moving from software to the design side, but rather most people move from design side to software which seems like the more natural path.

> digital designers tend to push back in favor of vendor tools.

Which is fair in my experience because Verilator has serious limitations compared to the other three - no 4-state simulation (though that is apparently coming!), no GUI, no coverage, UVM etc. UVM is utter shite tbf, and I think they are working on support for it.

Also it's much slower than the commercial simulators in my experience. Much slower to compile designs, and runtime is on the order of 3x slower. Kind of weird because it has a reputation for being faster but I've seen this same result in at least two different companies with totally different designs.

I gave up on Verilator support in a previous company when we ran into a plain miscompilation. There was some boolean expression that it simply compiled incorrectly. Difficult to trust with your $10m silicon order after that!

It's definitely nice that it doesn't require any ludicrously expensive licenses though.