Md Najmussadat joined SemiQon in 2024 as an IC designer, around the time the company had roughly ten employees. He came to the role after finishing his PhD, and his path to that point had already crossed several countries and fields.

Md is from Bangladesh, where he earned his bachelor's degree in electrical and electronics engineering before spending two years working in the communications sector. From there he moved to Germany for a master's in RF and high frequency electronic circuit design, then returned to Bangladesh for four years as a university lecturer. In 2017 he came to Finland for his PhD, and he has been settled here ever since, now with his family and two children.

The right place at the right time

Md found SemiQon at exactly the right moment. He was finishing his thesis and looking for what to do next, ideally something close to home in Espoo. "I saw an advertisement that SemiQon was looking for exactly IC design positions," he recalls. He emailed the team and was invited in for a conversation.

What followed was a meeting with the co-founders of SemiQon about what the company was doing and what it needed. "It seemed that a lot of things were really connected," Md says. His background was in one domain and theirs in a somewhat different one, but the overlap was clear. "We thought we could help each other, so that I can design and give some perspective in other parts." After a second interview and a presentation of his work, the fit was obvious to everyone.

From hundreds of gigahertz to near-DC

The technical shift was significant. Md's PhD focused on very high frequency IC design, working in the hundreds of gigahertz on circuits for communications, mobile communications, and radio astronomy, along with millimeter wave designs for health and sensing applications. At SemiQon, the work sits at the opposite end of the spectrum, much closer to DC, in the range from zero up to a few gigahertz.

“It was quite a shift from my previous one," he says. But the bigger change wasn't the frequency. It was the tools. During his PhD, he worked with commercial software where everything was ready, so he could focus purely on the design. At SemiQon, those tools didn't exist for this domain, so the team built their own, writing the scripts and design flow themselves. Once he got a grip on the new way of working, the benefit was clear: the scripts automate the repetitive parts, so a small team can design at a much bigger scale.

Into the commercial phase

When Md joined, he handled the design work in collaboration with SemiQon's CTO and co-founder, Janne Lehtinen. Since then, the design team has grown, and the company's focus has sharpened around its cryo-CMOS electronics. That has meant a lot more design work.

It has also changed the mindset. As SemiQon has moved into its commercial phase, working on real customer orders, the stakes have shifted. "In the beginning, at the innovation level, it was more experimental: okay, let's try these things, we design something and we hope it will work," Md says. "Now the mindset is different. We need to deliver something, and we have to make sure it works." He sums up the difference simply: it used to be a question of whether it would work, now it must work and meet the specs. The bar is higher, but that is also what makes the work meaningful.

A culture that makes room

When asked about the culture at SemiQon, one word comes up first: flexibility. "I appreciate the flexibility and trust I'm given to organize my work," he says. Alongside that is a sense of genuine collaboration. Even on busy days with tight schedules, everyone is ready to help. "Whenever I approach Janne (the CTO & co-founder of SemiQon), even when he's busy, he's always there for a discussion and answers my questions immediately," Md says.

Deadlines are a constant in IC design, and Md is candid that they can make things intense. Some days the pressure is on and the work is demanding, but there are relaxed days too, and the balance works. For him, the deadlines are part of what keeps the job motivating, alongside the steady stream of new challenges. And the payoff is concrete. “The most rewarding part is when you see your design at the product level, in the chip, packaged and delivered.”

His advice for anyone considering SemiQon is straightforward. "I am not exaggerating anything. I tell the true picture: here you have freedom in your work, you have to contribute, and you will learn a lot of things in a new domain. If this sounds like you and you have the opportunity, please go for it."

"I appreciate the flexibility and trust I'm given to organize my work"

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A view of the field, and of home

Md keeps an eye on where quantum is heading and is optimistic about the next decade. He sees the real advantage emerging on the electronics side, which is precisely where SemiQon is focused. "If we can meet our expectations, it will be a great journey," he says.

Outside work, his time belongs mostly to his family. He has two young children whose hobbies and energy fill his weekends, and he carves out time for himself with sports, having played football for years and now cycling, along with small excursions to explore nearby. After eight years in Finland, with his family settled and his kids growing up here, it's home.

One small highlight of life at SemiQon is lunch with colleagues. Almost every day Md heads out for lunch with his teammates, a simple tradition that has become one of the best parts of the day. The work of an IC designer is demanding, but as he tells it, one of the toughest decisions of the day might just be which lunch spot to go to.

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