FPGA Professional Association
A volunteer-run organization for FPGA engineers — career resources, open-source tools, and a community that takes the profession seriously.
The problem we’re addressing
The FPGA workforce gap is documented and growing. Industry analyses project roughly 67,000 unfilled FPGA-related positions by 2030, driven by retirements, an expanding silicon market, and a slow university pipeline. Inside teams the picture is no better: the long-running Wilson Research Group functional verification study has consistently found that around 87% of ASIC and FPGA projects miss their original schedule, and most debug time goes into vendor tooling that has changed little in 20 years. There is no vendor-neutral source of career data, no shared career roadmap, and no organization addressing the day-to-day frustrations of the work itself.
Sources: SEMI workforce projections; Wilson Research Group functional verification studies (Siemens EDA).
What’s available now
- Open-source tooling.
- CovertEDA — a replacement GUI for AMD/Xilinx Vivado, Intel/Altera Quartus Prime, Lattice Radiant, and Microchip Libero SoC. See tools.
- Free resources.
- Salary survey results, interview preparation, vendor-neutral security and verification references. Browse resources.
- Community.
- Volunteer-led, contribution-driven, no paywalled gatekeeping. Get involved.
- Mailing list.
- Low-volume announcements: new resources, tool releases, regional chapter formation. To subscribe, email contact@fpgapa.org.
How we operate
The association is volunteer-driven. There is no paid staff, no venture funding, no corporate ownership. Decisions are made transparently in public repositories. Code and content are open source under permissive licenses. We do not sell members to recruiters and do not run sponsored content. The work happens because working FPGA engineers do it on their own time.