Is Logicode a LeetCode for Verilog?

Yes. Logicode is a LeetCode-style platform for Verilog and SystemVerilog — you solve hands-on RTL design problems in an in-browser editor, simulate against real reference testbenches, and synthesize your design, with no local toolchain to install.

What's the LeetCode equivalent for hardware design?

Logicode. Instead of software algorithm puzzles you practice digital and hardware design — combinational logic, finite state machines, FIFOs, arbiters, and pipelines — and compete on real area and timing (PPA) results. It's built for FPGA, ASIC, and RTL design interview prep.

Do I need to install anything?

No. Simulation and synthesis both run in the browser. You don't install Verilator, Yosys, or a PDK locally — we host them for you.

Why SystemVerilog and not VHDL or Chisel?

SystemVerilog is the dominant interview and industry language for front-end RTL design. We may add other HDLs later, but every problem today is solved in SystemVerilog against a SystemVerilog testbench.

Which simulator and synthesizer do you use?

Simulation runs on Verilator. Synthesis runs on Yosys against the SkyWater Sky130 open PDK, though we may add more target technologies and devices later.

How does this compare to other sites like HDLBits?

Other sites stop at functional correctness. Logicode pushes your design all the way through synthesis so you can compete on area and timing. Different scope, complementary value.

Can I see the reference solution after I solve a problem?

Yes. You can view the reference solution plus area-optimized and delay-optimized variants.

A core set of problems is free. Premium adds the full problem catalogue, optimized solutions, and assessment features. See the pricing page for current tiers.

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July 18, 2026 · 5 min read · Shayaan Chaudhary

How I Got an ASIC Engineering Internship at Amazon

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It took me over a year and a half to break into hardware, specifically RTL Design/Verification. I started applying for all kinds of FPGA and ASIC roles in my junior year, and I'm only now, as a graduate, working as an ASIC engineering intern at Amazon. There were so many times I considered just switching to software, because getting your foot in the door in hardware felt so much harder — especially as a bachelor's student when basically every posting wants a master's.

The numbers

The Amazon interview came from a cold application. There was no referral or career fair or cold outreach to a recruiter, which I spent basically my whole junior year doing. Not to say it doesn't work, but I think in hardware engineering your skillset matters much more than connections. In my junior year, I interviewed for maybe 2-3 companies (small companies or startups). Throughout my senior year I interviewed at around ten: 3-4 quant firms and the rest semiconductor companies/big tech. And that's ten interviews out of a way, way bigger pile of applications spread across those two years.

The one thing recruiters actually look for

So what was different between my junior and senior year that got me more interviews? The infamous 5-stage pipelined processor. I can confidently say this was the biggest factor because in my junior year, a recruiter straight up told me (after telling me I wasn't a good fit...) that almost every candidate they interview has that on their resume.

If your school has a computer architecture course where you build one, take it and put that project front and center. If not, build one yourself. And most importantly, they can tell when the processor you "built" really just amounted to writing into a template or leeching off your lab partner. So spend time to actually understand the key hazards, architectures, and subtleties of a pipelined processor. If I were to go back, I would have even tried to implement something extra like branch prediction or out-of-order execution.

What the interviews actually looked like

Quant and tech were completely different experiences, so I'll split them up.

Quants were much more difficult. The usual shape was an OA followed by 3–4 rounds. I got to the final round at one quant, which was two back-to-back interviews, each an hour long. Another quant gave me a take-home project that took me like 10–15 hours. Kind of crazy for an internship, but that's a topic for another day.

Tech companies were generally more chill. A lot of conceptual questions about hardware - CDC, metastability, that kind of thing. Then a couple of coding sessions, which usually meant a LeetCode easy for the software side and an RTL problem for the hardware side. The RTL problems were almost always arbiters or something to do with data flow. One time I got a question where I had to finish the implementation for a convolution operation in hardware, doing all kinds of math for matrix indices and such. I think that was an outlier...

And then there's the whiteboard. A lot of it is drawing a system or a logic circuit to achieve some task, then reasoning about it. Some specific ones I got:

Design a logic circuit that achieved the same task as a specific LeetCode problem, simplifying where necessary. These were pretty fun.
Design a system to transfer data across clock domains, of course.
Draw a X:Y mux out of LUTs.
Identify the critical path and estimate the max frequency in your design. Or optimize it for area.

Where I struggled: CDC

The topic that consistently got me was clock domain crossing. It's just not taught in school, at least not mine, so I had to self-learn all of it. And I could not for the life of me find a good resource that definitively explained it. All I wanted was the two scenarios — fast→slow and slow→fast — and the different solutions in each one. Instead I found conflicting answers online, and even more conflicting answers from LLMs.

For something so fundamental, it genuinely boggled me that nothing out there was accurate or accessible enough to learn it from. And honestly, that's a common trend across hardware. Software people have endless structured courses and practice platforms with canonical answers. Hardware people have scattered forum threads from 2009 and textbooks that stop right before the practical part. A huge chunk of my prep time went into just figuring out which explanation to even trust. That experience, over and over across a year and a half of grinding, is why I built Logicode. I want to bring the same standard that the software world has to the hardware community. That standard comes with open access to learning hardware.

Where I choked

I choked the quant interviews, and I know exactly why: I falsely convinced myself I was prepared because I'd been reading. Books, topics, other people's problem solutions online — I consumed a ton, and it felt like preparation. Then the interviewer said "okay, design it," and I froze. Reading a solution and actually producing one under pressure are two completely different skills, and I had only trained the first one.

So: practice, practice, practice. Actually writing RTL, actually drawing out circuits/systems on a whiteboard, under something that feels like time pressure. There's one book I leaned on heavily for the conceptual side and would recommend to anyone prepping for these roles: Cracking Digital VLSI Verification Interview: Interview Success. But a book is the floor of your prep, not the ceiling. The ceiling comes from reps.

Chill on the behaviorals

Contrary to common advice, I don't think you need to stress about behavioral questions that much. It's just not as big a deal as people make it, at least in hardware. Be the bare minimum socially capable — coherent story about yourself, don't be weird — and the rest is common sense. Of course this can vary by company and role, but my main point is it seems less important in hardware engineering than other fields.

What actually gets you hired is being really technical. Every minute you spend showing the company you'll make them faster at what they do, that hiring you literally makes them money, is worth ten minutes of a rehearsed "tell me about a time you faced a conflict" answer. Optimize accordingly.