Hello everybody. And thank you for joining us today to find out how awesome it is to be an engineer at Synopsis. We do not send the rover to Mars. Oh, wait, our colleagues, Synopsis, optical engineers help designing the Zoom lens on the perseverance rover but not me.I write software which is used for designing chips. The ones which go on electrical electronic DEV on electronic devices like your phone. I'm Andrea Lazar, a staff research and development engineer at Synopsis, working on a tool called K which is used for designing chips, the chips that enable and drive the new era of smart everything. But how are they created? They are printed by a machine using lithography. A design engineer creates a chip design which contains some shapes like the letter A here for example. But how is the lithography machine understanding this design there is where I come in. I write software that translates this design file to a machine readable format. In reality, a chip design can contain billions of shapes. So the problem becomes complex. I have been working for Synopsis for more than 11 years now. In ed a field, the industry which produces software that enables the design and production of faster smaller smarter chips without increasing their production cost exponentially.

I am located in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, but I was born and raised in Romania and I work with people within synopsis from multiple continents. How does the day of an R and D engineer? Uh Synopsis looks, looks like I start my day by preparing my free kids for school and daycare. Right now, we have an efficient morning routine. But every now and then I need to remind myself the best advice I ever received never have an argument with a kid younger than five. We are currently in hybrid working mode. So depending on the day of the week, I go to the office or work from home, there are days with more meeting brainstorming sessions. There are days with more focused work on designing a new feature, optimizing algorithms, fixing customer issues, depending on your role in a in a project. As an R and D engineer, you can be involved in the entire lifetime of a project or mainly it's in development phase. For example, as an experienced engineer, I'm currently the technical lead for a project. I have overseen the project from the requirement step. I developed a prototype for it, worked closely with the application engineer and quality assurance engineer to validate it and measure its per performance.

What I love the most about synopsis is that no matter how senior you are, you still get to co I will be working on product. This solution seeing the results of the prototype was very rewarding for me. But you don't get that daily. I think finding clarity and uncertainty is the most challenging part of my work as engineers. We love order. But in real life, there's a lot of uncertainty. So you need to know how to handle it. Like for example, having technical issues with this presentation today or finding a solution for a tricky problem, clarifying requirements, fixing customer issues with limited information. This industry takes data security extremely seriously. So you need to be very analytical and think about every little clue. You get.

Some people might find this frustrating but happiness comes from solving problems. So you need to find the problems you enjoy solving. Although most of the time I have been the only woman in my team. Over the years, I had the opportunity to meet and learn several men and women from different teams and departments. And they had inspired me to become a better version of myself. For example, last year I participated in the synopsis women in leadership program. This program was launched in 2017 with an emphasis on bringing greater focus on growing the talents of female leaders. We had monthly peer coaching activities, meeting with synopsis, female leaders, book chats and ted talk discussions. We attended internal and external events. But what did this mean for me?

I learned how to be more confident in my role, how to set better boundaries, how to get out of my comfort zone while having really meaningful connections and building up good relationships. I am uh I'm very grateful for being a graduate of the Synopsis Women in Leadership program.

It was an inspiring journey and I had the privilege to meet a diverse set of smart and driven ladies. Currently, I'm part of Synopsis custom design and manufacturing group, the Inclusion and diversity task force. I am trying to pay it forward by helping create a community of women in our department in Europe and outside of synopsis. I'm trying to make a difference for a driven young lady by being her mentor at women tech mentoring platform. I will now give the floor to Arnaud, which I hope he is connected and thank you for your time. Don't hesitate to reach out to me via women tech mentoring program or via linkedin. Thank you.

OK. So hello everyone. My name is Marie Carval. I'm a engineering manager in Synopsis, Port Portugal. Uh I'm 37 years old and I joined Synopsis in 2009, a long time ago. Uh when I first joined Synopsis, I joined as a digital designer. And uh during my first years in synopsis, uh I was given an amazing opportunity to grow and participate uh into in several uh projects where I, where my, my expertise was used not only for the RT L development as a uh as a digital designer, but also for the architectural definition of those designs.

So that that was an amazing experience. Through the years, I grow. I I my technical skills have grown a lot. And then later on about five years ago, I was given the opportunity to transition to a management position. Um The transition from a fully technical position to management position is always full of challenges uh when we are technical and when we are engineers, we tend to think that the management position is basically day to day following planning and uh working on resource allocations and uh losing all the interesting stuff.

Um Well, yes, Excel became my new BFF when I did this transition. But luckily for me, uh it was also possible to continue to touch base with uh my technical skills. I'm still participating in the development of new products and I, I'm still a valid contribute uh when we are doing developments of new products or of new flows. So on my day to day, I cannot say I'm only doing engineering uh management role. I'm still doing engineering work, which is amazing. Uh What is also amazing. And one thing that uh really um valued my, my professional experience was that by transitioning to a management role, I was able to embrace one of the best challenges that I ever have faced in my professional life, which is uh to actively contribute to the growth and development of my team members.

This is actually the favorite, my favorite part of my job is to basically be able to empower people and ensure that they are able to grow and to excel in their work. Another part of my day uh is to contact with people throughout the world like Andrea, I already mentioned in synopsis, we are all over the world and in our day to day work, we contact with teams with different cultures and different backgrounds and the fact that we have this diversity uh in our teams.

And in our day to day work, I believe brings added value to our work because we can incorporate different perspectives. And if we have this open mindset to these different perspectives, I believe the end result is much better. So it's also an excellent part of being in synopsis.

Uh uh and another part of my day to day work. And the one that I believe it is very important as a manager is to ensure that the team model is always high. And uh this was a particular challenge in the past couple of years due to COVID. And that's why I believe it's very important for, for a manager. Whenever there is the opportunity to work and to invest in teambuilding activities. Uh In my, in my slide, you can see some of the photos of the of these teambuilding activities. In the last couple of years, we had to go virtual. It was a challenge. We had to come up with ideas of things that we could do online. But still, it was, even though it was the biggest challenge, it was al also the most rewarding teambuilding events because we realized that we were really making a difference in people's um day to day because they were uh facing uh a world full of challenges and giving, giving the people the opportunity to contact with uh with their teammates in a more relaxed environment was good for our mental health.

Um I would also like to talk a little bit briefly about some of the program synopsis has given me the opportunity to participate in uh in the last years. So Andrea already mentioned the woman in leadership for which I also have joined and in which I have uh chance to, to contact with peers in similar positions to me. And that was very enriching to exchange experiences and to learn from others on how to uh uh to succeed in our careers. And uh and that was I believe uh um uh uh factor of of uh professional development for me. Another program that my colleague Christina will mention later on is the girls school engineering program in which we give a scholarship to one student in the engineering area. And this program is also amazing because it put me uh it has put me in contact with the newer generation of engineers and uh by being in contact with this new generation in engineers. To be honest, I was amazed uh on how active the new generation is and how willing they are uh to change the world. They are, they are very proactive. They want to basically do things that are meaningful and it is good to see that.

It is good to see how the new generation is worried about the world and wants to actively work to change. And that's it from my side. That's more or less what I do on a daily basis. Um Thank you. Thank you for being here and for hearing me. And I'm not sure if we have uh our colleagues already managed to join. We still have their videos.

I see that they are still having troubles connecting. So I would say let's just try to have a discussion. Does anybody from the audience have any questions for us? You can just write it in the chat. And until then, so Mara, you have been involved in the girls, go engineering. What's your advice for the newer generation or for your younger self? So if you could give an advice to yourself 10 years ago, uh or 15,

yes. Well, uh don't be afraid to speak out, to be honest. I think uh for some reason uh when we, when I started out, I think I have uh imposter syndrome. Uh and I think I, I would refrain myself to participate and to be honest uh in the engineering world. It's always ok to participate and to give your opinion, even if you are wrong, you are not going to lose anything. You are just going to gain from the feed feedback you receive from others. So you should not be afraid to speak out and to give your opinion, to keep an open

mind. Yeah, I totally agree with that. So, as long as you give some arguments then any opinion is really welcome. Oh, I see, Christina joined us.

Yes. Hello, finally. Sorry, I had some connection issue. I don't know what was happening.

So can you please tell us about yourself and your work at synopsis?

Ok. So you have my slide already here? OK. So hello everyone. My name is Christina Plio as it says here. Uh It's a great pleasure to be here with you today. I'm a senior verification engineer at Synopsis and um I'm based in Porto along with Mara in Portugal. I have been working here for five years and it has been a great experience. I started here at Synopsis as an automation engineer in another team since my background was more focused in software. But then I realized that I wanted to do something more challenging and I thought why not try in another team so to explore the new paths and get out of my comfort zone. And as I was surrounded by and designers and verification engineers, I started looking for what would be more interesting and more suitable for me. And that is when I decided to move to another team and become a verification engineer. And I really enjoyed this this new path.

And so what does a verification engineer do? Uh being a verification engineer means that we must work closely with the design team to verify their designs. And the verification code is usually implemented with the hardware description language called system vlog or vlog. Um My days here at Synopsis since I joined the verification team, they usually start with meetings with colleagues from Porto from India, from Armenia where our teammates are located.

Um Hello everybody. Uh My name is Arnold Arnold AO. Um I work for Synopsis for the last 1.5 years as a product IP product and quality release engineer within the C AD team. Uh My, my group in Synopsis is the silicon realization group and my bu is hacked which is hardware analytics and test group. So I work for the methodology team within this hat group. Um I live in Fre in South Gloucestershire. It's a rural area. Uh not far from Bristol, west of England, near the, the Welsh border. Um I'm a family man. I've got my partner there as you can see and I like my travel, my sport, food, movies, music and um my official title of synopsis is a staff C ad engineer. Uh We're a team of three people based in the UK, but we're expanding our team. So there are two people in Bangalore, India who are going to start in July to, to join us on, on our efforts. As you can see, I'm a staunch arsenal, a football supporter for my sense, we haven't won any cups for a long time, but um I'm still faithful. Thank you. And uh the next slide. So I just want to give you some background as to, to my work and what I do and, and, and synopsis. So my average day I start with um just walking in my country park. I'm very lucky it's on my doorstep.

So um I either ride my bicycle or if I'm feeling more energetic, I do a walk for about an hour. Uh I have been working remotely for, since I joined Synopsis. So I haven't met any one of my colleagues, but this, this hasn't really affected the collaboration, the camaraderie and the support and the spirit that we have at Synopsis. Uh Find this has not been a hindrance to the way we work and to the, the T method. So um like I say, I'm, I'm based in Bristol. So my everyday work as a process uh Q A and release flow engineer is to ensure that the IP is verification. Clean Q stands for quality analysis. So, Synopsis has some um industry standard, sign off tools to do the physical verification and this is to ensure that what we're delivering to our customers is of the highest quality in terms of the design and we ensure that it's functionally uh bug free. So that's my day to day work on the basis and related to that is the the release after the quality checking. Um So like I mentioned, we have a team of three people, one of them is solely responsible for the infrastructure. So this means it's the product environment, we have to ensure that we have enough CPU resources and uh service in order for the design team to do the implementation. Um My other colleague is mainly looking after the flow which is scripting.

We try to automate the scripts as much as possible so that it's, it's a repetitive, it's consistent, it's seamless and one designer can actually do exactly the same as another designer. It's not, it's not depending on the location or the individual. So we try to make sure that everything is generic so that when we do the packaging, it all fits in together. So the engagement for methodology engineer is the R and D team who actually hand over the deliverables to us to bundle and package. And part of that iteration is the in design keyword checks. So we have a constant interloop there making sure they're clean um between R and D and my team. What I haven't decided as SLM in design Q A are scripts that we've put together. We work very closely with the central solutions group and synopsis so that we're doing apples for apples Q A testing before we bundle all these views together and we put it on what we call the design wear, which is the synopsis IP shelf for customers to go and download and start using.

So that's my typical day technical reviews and cross functional uh engagement. The different teams were responsible for the IP at the end and the delivery to the customer. Um As I think you heard about my role and my engagement with the different synopsis teams in my area of work. What I'd like to say is at the moment as far as IND is concerned, I am the European champion for Silicon Realization Group for IND. I'm part of the steering committee to decide our drive and motivation for I and D um uh issues or, or initiation objectives within synopsis. Hence, some of this meeting, I am also a mentor for women tech. So please reach out, get in touch with me via linkedin and um let's have continue with the conversation and um I'm very honored and humbled to be part of this discussion. Thank you, everybody. So over to you Christina,

I will start again from the moment that I think was the last one. If it's OK with everyone, I don't know. What was the last one? So sorry. I think I was talking about my, my tasks, my daily life at synopsis. And what do I do as a verification engineer? So as I was saying, um me as being as a senior verification engineer, it means that I am responsible for several projects and I have to interact with people from other teams. Usually the design team or the analog team, I must be organized. I must keep track of all the new requests that we get discuss with the design teams uh to ensure that all the features are verified and all the open items are solved. Uh What are the most fun tasks for me are the debug process because I really enjoy finding solutions to problems and I also enjoy to create new test cases uh to cover new features that we have. Um what makes me grow at synopsis usually are the struggles that we encountered with every difficulty that we have in the code and every limitation and pressure I gain more knowledge. Um So I believe it's very important to study uh verification methodologies and have a solid knowledge about the design. Um also improve uh our debug and programming skills and work closely with the design engineers and share knowledge with them.

Um And always of course, strive for the high quality and uh for improvement for continuous improvement in our, in our work. Uh I don't know if Mara already spoke about the initiatives that we have. Like the girls go engineering.

I I just mentioned it briefly so you can go on and explain it a little bit better.

Uh OK. So we have some uh important initiatives like I said, like the girls school engineering. So this program is offering a scholarship for one academic year to a female engineering student. I was involved in this project with Mara and some other colleagues of ours, uh we had to to select a student based on their performance on their um their letters of uh motivation, their motivational letters, their grades. And then we, we made some personal interviews to them.

I really enjoyed that because we, we got the chance to meet, to meet new uh uh young female engineers that they had great ideas and uh and dreams about life. And uh we could encourage them to pursue a career in our field. So it was really nice to encourage them to, to pursue this, this career and to, to see how they think and to, they could talk to us about their dreams. They are really, really motivated, they really have a great hopes for the future. Um And uh I would also like to say that here at synopsis is not only about work. Uh We like to cultivate a friendly environment and organize fun activities. So before the pandemic, we used to, to have some off site events where we would go for small, small daily trips, do team building activities. But then the pandemic came. So we had to, to adjust and um we had to, to make some uh some team building activities that we could do from teams or from zoom with uh our verification colleagues, my my verification colleagues um which really helped to keep the team spirits up. And here are some pictures from our team building events outside and at the office. I'm like, if you see those ones with the masks, they are from the office and um I think that's all from me. So thank you for your attention.

Sorry for the problems with the connection. Thank you to the women in tech for inviting us and organizing this. That's

it. Yes. Thank you, Christina. I think Fabian had issues connecting and she joined us for a bit, but she's not able to speak. So I think that this is all from our side. I think, I hope you enjoyed our messy presentation. But yeah, we like solving problems and we hope we, we inspired you to keep your uh tech career and continue the work that you are doing and feel free

to reach us. Yes.

And I also forgot to say that we are participating in the mentorship program. I don't know if you said this matter also. OK. OK.

So, so all of us are s you can search for us. You can use the keyword synopsis if you want to find all of us. Thank

you all for joining.

Thank you. Thank you.

Bye

bye.