What courses should I take to be able to be a professional electrical engineer?

I am an experienced embedded software engineer. I would like to learn to design hardware - microcontroller-based boards. What skills do I need to learn? What are possible courses I need to take?

• Answer:

  By hardware design you mean PCB board design I think. For PCB design you can start with Cadsoft Eagle that is professional tool and is free for 2 layer design with some more constrain. There are open-source designs available (like Arduino) that you can tweak with or modify. Better to design board for your own project, as DFM (Design For Manufacturing) is a matter of serious concern for production. Signal integrity and transmission line theory are some advanced concepts that need to be studied for DFM. You need to verify your design from industry expert or better to manufacture your PCB. Now if you are familiar with two layer design and want to design multi-layer, then you can try your hands by purchasing full-version or if money is a matter to think again, then some open-source tools@http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_EDA_software are there for you. I have used Kicad as it has many users. There are most industry standard professional tools like Cadence Allegro, Altium designer, Mentor graphics PADS that are costly. You can use these tools for high speed board design that has industry demand. So it would be better to penetrate industry to get a relevant profile for further work.