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Nvidia Corp made the 2004 list of Fortune magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For. It was recognized this year by Fortune as one of the five most-admired semiconductor companies in the world, and named one the best Bay Area workplaces by the San Francisco Business Times/San Jose Business Journal. "Nvidia's culture inspires our team of top engineers and developers through a focus on innovation, teamwork and camaraderie," declares Karen Miller, Nvidia's manager of university relations and diversity.
Ten-year-old Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors, which are used in both consumer and professional computing platforms: consumer digital-media PCs, enterprise PCs, professional workstations, digital content creation systems, notebook PCs, military navigation systems and video game consoles. "We are the market leader in visual computing. We create products that will enhance the interactive experience on consumer and professional computing platforms," Miller says. OEMs like Toshiba and Dell use Nvidia products in their systems. So does Microsoft's first X-box game console.
In 2003, Nvidia grew more than 20 percent, to its current 1,800 employees. According to Miller, about 10 percent of the new hires were new grads in computer engineering, CS and EE.
Nvidia also hired ninety-six interns and co-ops last year. The company's intern and co-op program has been in place since the company was founded. "Our leaders truly believe in the value of hiring co-ops and interns," Miller says.
The company hires interns and co-ops year round, from universities with strong EE and CS programs: MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, Caltech, U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and more. "The goal of the intern and co-op program is to build a pipeline of talented engineers," says Miller. "We hope they will become the future leaders of our company."
The majority of the interns and co-ops work out of headquarters in Santa Clara, but some work at remote offices in Austin, TX; Raleigh-Durham, NC; Boston, MA and Fort Collins, CO. "They're also in several of our international offices," Miller notes.
Nvidia makes a variety of campus visits - and not just for career fairs. "We often visit campuses to give technical lectures and to meet with professors and students about their research," Miller says.
"We believe that the growth and development of a diverse employee culture gives us a key business advantage," Miller says. Nvidia reaches out to the university and professional technical community with its "N-side Look" events, which involve a tour, a corporate presentation, an engineering panel discussion and a networking event. The company started the events in 2003 and has hosted six separate groups so far, including SWE and WITI chapters.
Nvidia posts its student and full time jobs to diversity-focused websites, and maintains relationships with SHPE, SWE and NSBE chapters through donations and sponsorships. Nvidia reps attend minority career fairs and campus recruiting events.
"Nvidia prides itself on hiring innovative, bright and driven engineers, and we recruit them from around the world," Miller says. "We have engineers working in our offices and working from home, across the U.S. and worldwide - all extremely intelligent, driven individuals."
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www.nvidia.com
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Headquarters: |
Santa Clara, CA |
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Employees: |
1,800 |
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Revenues: |
$1.8 billion |
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Business: |
Graphics processors and other visual computing technologies |
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