Why I chose to work at Arm

I knew little of Arm before applying. I was aware of their interest in the design of lower power processors and the wide adoption of their designs in the embedded systems market (e.g. mobile phones and MP3 players). On further investigation, I read Arm had won lots of awards on being a great company to work for, which meant that when time came to apply, I could do so without reservation.

The type of work I have done since joining Arm

Since joining Arm in March of 2008 as a Processor Division Graduate Engineer, I have participated in their rotation program. This involved one short four week project, and three longer three month projects. My work included writing validation tests in ARM assembler, RTL design and optimisation, and a bit of Perl scripting.

How I have been supported as a graduate

The Cambridge Processor Division Graduate Program offers a large amount of support for incoming graduates. This is given directly by three main people, a Graduate Line Manager, a Technical Lead, and a Graduate Buddy. These people respectively look after your career development, project technical issues, and all things social, which makes the transition to professional engineering a much less daunting task.

The social activities at Arm for graduates

Arm provides many events for its employees to socialise and relax. The first is the great summer BBQ with plenty of food, beer kegs, and bumper cars. Another is black tie Christmas party, with street artists, giant size slot car racers, casino, cocktail bar, and a funky theme.
I would definitely recommend this job to anybody from a background of hardware or software engineering with a desire to become involved in the design of modern processors.