Hardware engineer helps demystify the interview
By Ashley Shah
Scripps Ranch resident Milind Parelkar is accomplished in his field of hardware engineering and is a longtime, high-level employee of Qualcomm.
Parelkar received his undergraduate degree from the University of Mumbai in India. He moved to the United States in 2003 to pursue his master’s in electrical and computer engineering at George Mason University, graduating in 2005.
“The university is close to D.C., so right out of my master’s program I worked for a few years in that area for a defense contractor,” he said.
In 2008, he moved to San Diego.
“With the economical issues that took place in 2008, I came to San Diego to work for Qualcomm,” Parelkar said.
He has been with Qualcomm for almost 20 years as a hardware engineer, serving the last five years as a principal engineer.
“At Qualcomm, I work in the research and design department. At a high level, I work on communication technologies. I work on next generation technology that is about five to six years down the line,” he said. “I have worked on some of the Qualcomm flagship technologies. I worked on 4G and 5G technology. I am now working on 6G technology. Essentially, I work on technology that has to do with the chips inside of your cellphone.”
In addition, he works as a hiring manager for Qualcomm.
“As a hiring manager, I do hands-on technical work, people management, and am closely involved in the hiring process in my department,” he said.
With his vast experience, Parelkar published a book called “Demystifying the Digital Design Interview” in February.
“What inspired this book was that a few years ago, there were talks about layoffs in Qualcomm. I got nervous and I started to study as if I were to have to interview for another job. I found it hard to study. In fields like software engineering, there are a lot of resources. There is not anything like that for hardware engineering. Even with artificial intelligence, there are many errors in the content provided. I saw this as an opportunity to fill that void,” he said.
Parelkar started writing a blog in 2023 to aid those looking for jobs in hardware engineering.
“There was a great response from the blog. A lot of people started to contact me,” he said. “I realized that I wanted to convert this into something more formal, which was the book. I went the independent publishing route.”
The book is available on Amazon as an ebook or as a paperback.
“I am working with other distributors to make this available in stores, such as at Barnes and Nobles,” Parel-kar said.
Parelkar has sold around 100 copies of the book on Amazon so far.
“Let’s say you have one week to study for an interview, and you don’t want to search everywhere. I wanted this to be a one stop shop,” he said. “This is my way of giving back to the engineering community. As a hiring manager, I go through many resumes and interviews. There is a big gap in what is taught in school and what we do in the industry. I want to bridge that gap with this book.”
Outside of his career, Parelkar fills his time with many hobbies, and he belongs to the Scripps Ranch Swim and Racquet Club.
“I enjoy cycling, reading, writing calligraphy in English and Indian languages, playing chess, pickleball and swimming,” Parelkar said.
To keep up with Parelkar, his blog is https://fpgadesign.io. He can be contacted through LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/milind-parelkar.