Mario: Imagination Technologies graduate

Employer: Imagination Technologies
Qualifications: MSc telecommunications engineering, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain and Universität Karlsruhe, Germany

I have always been interested in software engineering and have played around making software for a long time. Work experience helped me decide that I wanted to develop software for consumer electronics.

Developing a new chip

I work in visual silicon intellectual property (IP) technologies, designing chips for graphics, video and display in embedded systems (computer systems that control electronic devices). It’s an exciting area to work in: I need to deliver high levels of performance with low power requirements and my work has a direct influence on the consumer electronics market. I have been involved in a project to develop a new chip since I started here, working in a team that is in charge of the software part of the project. We design and develop the firmware (software stored in read-only memory (ROM) or programmable ROM) that runs inside the new chip, as well as the drivers (software that enables you to interact with a hardware device at a higher software level). The tasks we have to perform vary a lot from week to week and can include: designing a subsystem; improving the performance of a certain piece of code; reviewing how the chip is supposed to work; generating tests for other teams; implementing new features; and fixing bugs.

Office culture

I share an office with my team mates: a senior design engineer who manages us, a few design engineers and a couple of graduate design engineers. There’s a focus on on-the-job training based on learning from team mates and being mentored. It’s very relaxed and there’s a nice ‘T-shirt and jeans’ culture and flexitime structure. We liaise a lot with other teams in charge of the different aspects of the project in order to bring our work together to meet clients’ deadlines.

The highlight

I love being involved in products that end up in consumer electronics. There’s nothing better than being able to say you were one of the people who developed a part of something that your friends carry around in their pockets or is sitting on all the shelves in the shops. My company is focused on next-generation technology so there’s also the excitement of knowing we are bringing things to market that could change the way consumer electronics work.