We see what your team
is too close to see.

For semiconductor companies planning large hiring rounds, expanding into new design domains, or building internal training infrastructure. We start with an audit of your team's current capability — tools they actually use, domains they are proficient in, gaps between what they have and what your roadmap requires. Then we design a 12–24 month skill development plan that addresses those gaps: what to train internally, what to hire for from outside, which domains VLSI EXPERT can supply engineers in, and what the realistic timeline to capability is.

This is not generic HR consulting. It is semiconductor-specific. The difference between a team that knows Synopsys Design Compiler and a team that does not know it is measurable in tape-out cycles. We understand that specificity and plan around it.

For engineering colleges and universities that want to build or significantly upgrade their VLSI and semiconductor curriculum. The standard ECE curriculum at most Indian colleges was designed around availability of textbooks, not availability of jobs. What companies actually hire for has shifted substantially — more emphasis on tool proficiency, real flow experience, and domain depth — and most curricula have not kept up.

We design semester-by-semester programs that close this gap. This includes selecting the right tools for lab infrastructure (with a view to cost and industry relevance), designing lab exercises that build real skill, structuring assessments that measure what matters, and training faculty to deliver the updated content. We draw on both our institutional partnerships — IITs, NITs, BITS Pilani — and our direct knowledge of what semiconductor companies are testing candidates on in interviews.

For design teams that are hitting the same problems repeatedly — timing convergence issues that do not resolve, DRC violations that reappear after ECO, synthesis QoR that is consistently worse than expected, or PrimeTime reports that do not correlate with simulation. These problems almost always have a methodology root cause: incorrect constraint development, missing design rules in the synthesis scripts, clock tree methodology that does not match the design intent, or parasitic extraction settings that are too optimistic.

We audit the Synopsys-based flow end to end — from the SDC file through synthesis scripts, floorplan methodology, CTS setup, routing constraints, and sign-off criteria. We deliver a written report identifying root causes and a concrete set of methodology changes with implementation support. VLSI EXPERT has 17 years of Synopsys tool expertise and direct relationships with Synopsys as a Workforce Development Partner. We know these tools at a depth that most teams do not.

For semiconductor startups and early-stage companies building their first chip. The decisions made in the first six months of a chip program — architecture, tool selection, design flow, foundry, team structure — have consequences that are very difficult and expensive to reverse eighteen months later when you are close to tape-out. A wrong choice of process node, a mismatched EDA toolchain, or an underestimated verification effort can delay tape-out by a year.

We provide advisory at the program level — not as a substitute for your engineering team, but as a check on the strategic decisions that generalist investors and first-time chip architects cannot evaluate. Think of us as a fractional CTO for the first phase of your silicon program: available for structured advisory sessions, technical reviews of key decision points, and reality-checks on schedule and resource assumptions.