Over the past 20 years, the IT industry in Romania has developed exponentially. More and more Romanian and foreign companies are investing in research activities, taking advantage of the talent and technical skills of local graduates of specialized universities. NXP Semiconductors Romania has been and continues to be part of this IT industry expansion process, starting with 5 employees in 2000 and reaching approximately 1,000 employees and co-workers in 2022.

A large part of the software development activities at NXP Semiconductors Romania is aimed at implementing solutions for autonomous cars (eg ADAS Radar). Autonomous cars are vehicles that contain a significant amount of chips and a significant amount of software. Also called software-defined vehicles, these cars benefit from a host of software features. Self-driving cars are updated remotely, like mobile phone software.

If today through a mobile application we can call a car with a driver to take us to the desired destination, then in a very short time the car that arrives will be without a driver, it will be a vehicle capable of perceiving and “sensing” traffic conditions , automatically adapts the trajectory and speed and safely transports passengers to their destination using radar systems. It may sound like a fantasy story, but science fiction writers envisioned these scenarios in the 60s, and radar systems originally used for military or aerospace purposes have recently become standard in the automotive industry.

Software engineers at NXP Semiconductors Romania work towards a common goal of high ethical value: saving lives! Thousands of road traffic accidents occur every year, mostly due to the fault of drivers. The cars of the future will eliminate the dependence on the human factor and will drive themselves, providing the transportation of passengers in conditions of maximum safety.

There are 5 levels of autonomy:

• Level 0: no automation – the driver executes all commands.
• Level 1: Driver assistance – the vehicle is driven by the driver, but certain automatic assistance services are built into the vehicle. Level 2: Partial automation – the car supports some automatic functions, but the driver remains responsible for coordinating all actions.
• Level 3: conditional automation – the driver is needed, but does not have to monitor the actions of the car. The driver must always be ready to take control of the vehicle. in
• 4: High automation – the vehicle is capable of performing all the necessary functions under certain conditions. The driver may be able to drive the vehicle.
• Level 5: Full automation – the vehicle is capable of performing all the necessary functions under any driving conditions. The driver may be able to take control of the vehicle.

The software architecture of autonomous cars will provide three fundamental elements for the benefit of passengers and pedestrians: perception of the environment, processing of large volumes of data and communication with other cars in motion.

Environmental perception is largely based on automotive radar systems operating in the 77 GHz band, whose hardware architecture includes MMIC (Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit) chips for data acquisition, respectively microcontrollers for radar signal processing. The entire radar signal processing chain is based on software algorithms running on hardware accelerators.

Our team develops software products that our customers use with the S32R processor family. For more information, see technical specifications of the product NXP S32R45.

Ambient motion sensing systems based on radar technologies are cheaper and more efficient than LiDAR or camera-based technologies, for example in difficult weather conditions.

NXP Semiconductors Romania engineers develop software algorithms used in radar applications and create intellectual property, respectively software patents. There is global collaboration with other innovation teams at NXP Semiconductors in the selection of radar algorithms, their optimization in simulators and their production, which will be supported on the hardware platforms offered by the company.

The knowledge required for this particular type of software development activity includes elements of special mathematics, linear algebra, statistics, and embedded programming. The field is technically fascinating and the Romanian team is respected and valued worldwide for the quality of results, innovation and collaboration.

Our engineers develop and test embedded software used in autonomous cars, 5G infrastructure or IoT solutions.

If you want to become our colleague, we invite you to apply for one of the vacancies available at https://www.nxp.com/company/about-nxp/careers:CAREERS.

Why would you join the NXP Romania team?

At NXP, we care about our people! The degree of satisfaction of our employees is very important to us, because people are the company’s greatest asset. We continue to implement and develop welfare and personal development programs. We encourage global collaboration and mentoring to advance careers and foster personal development.

At NXP, we have attractive compensation and benefits programs:

• RSU (Restricted Stock Units) is a bonus in NXP shares offered annually based on performance
• ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan) – employees have the opportunity to allocate part of their gross salary to purchase NXP shares at a discount of 15%.
• Two performance awards per year
• Other bonuses, for example: Bravo, peer-to-peer, project bonuses, etc.
• Referral bonus significant, for which we periodically launch campaigns
• Subscription to medical services and life insurance
• Calculation of sports activities and equipment
• Remote work option
• Wellbeing and Support Program through LifeWorks
• Master classes on hobbies, attention, success stories
• Personal development program
• Learning Programs – courses with instructors, or online on the company’s portal, certificates
• School of Software Architects is a training program for technical leaders
• School of Functional Safety, part of the Automotive Processing business line
• School of cyber security
• Internship programs and competitions
• CSR Program (Corporate Social Responsibility)
• The program of continuous improvement of the activity of the center in Romania, based on the feedback of our employees
• Bookster subscription
• Scholarships for masters and doctors of philosophy
• From the Fun@Work category, we organize events that combine work and fun: barbecues, teambuildings, various charity fairs, collective trips to volunteer events, after-hours parties, and others.

All of this is aimed at attracting the best talent and giving our employees the opportunity to realize their full potential.

We conduct annual employee satisfaction surveys.

In addition, we support an inclusive, transparent culture that promotes honesty, integrity, diversity and open feedback.

Robert David, Software Manager @ NXP Romania

Article supported by NXP Romania