FPGA Engineering

What is your educational background?

I am a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering. I graduated from University of Vaasa in 2019.

How were you hired at Danfoss?

While studying, I did my bachelor and master theses for Danfoss in FPGAs. After graduation, I applied for an FPGA engineer spot at Danfoss in Vaasa. The supervisor of my thesis – and the hiring manager – at Danfoss contacted me and mentioned about the opening.

What department and team are you part of?

Since I began at Danfoss Drives in Vaasa in April 2020, I have been working in Software & FPGA Engineering team in the Finnish SW & Control Engineering. I’m working in the FPGA scrum team with six other FPGA developers and two software developers.

What is your responsibility at Danfoss?

My main responsibility is to design, implement and test new features for FPGAs for Danfoss Drives products.

What technologies are you working with?

Daily tasks are mainly designing with VHDL and simulating with VHDL using UVVM framework. I have made some development in C and C++ on the lowest software layers. We’re also actively improving our ways-of-working within the team. This includes developing our CI systems in Azure DevOps with scripts written e.g. in Python.

What is the most important tool?

We do a lot of tests (simulations), so I would say ModelSim (from Mentor Graphics) for simulating the designs. Also Xilinx Vivado for creating the designs for Xilinx FPGAs.

What is the best part of your work?

After seeing the improvement when the team has developed a new feature or fixed a bug in the system. Also, having recently graduated with little experience, I’m learning something new every week. To be able to then later utilize new knowledge in another setting is a good, concrete sign of self-development.

Why did you choose Danfoss?

Danfoss had interesting FPGA related tasks in an FPGA team near where I live.  So from both a professional and a personal-life point of view it was an easy choice, not needing to relocate and also to be able to develop myself by learning from more experienced team-members.

Did anything surprise you when you started?

The number of simulations on different levels in our FPGA designs. So, there’s a lot of testing involved to find bugs as early as possible to deliver quality.

Where do you live?

I live in Vaasa with my family, approx. 20 min drive from the office. In the free time, I like to watch football, but I also try to keep myself active by doing sports, like ice-hockey and football.