An Electrical Engineer's PCB Design Journey: Income from Circuit Simulation

Short answer: With an electrical engineering degree, start PCB design freelancing by learning KiCad (free), building 2 to 3 personal projects to show as proof, and applying on Upwork or Fiverr. Small projects pay around Rs 3,000 to 8,000, complex multi-layer boards more. Simulation software like LTspice or Proteus matters just as much as the layout work itself.

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The layoff email landed on a Friday evening, 6:47 pm. No HR call first, just an email that said "role eliminated due to restructuring."

I'd put in two years at that company, on the hardware team. Two months of sitting at home followed, applications going out, a few interviews, a handful of rejections. One night, out of pure frustration, I opened my old college laptop, the one still running LTspice, and started simulating a circuit just to clear my head.

That same night it hit me: what I was doing for free out of boredom was exactly what people got paid for.

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The first project that never actually got finished

My first attempt went straight for something big, a full IoT device's PCB design. A client had posted it on Upwork with a budget of Rs 20,600.

I applied and got it. Three weeks in, it was clear I'd badly overestimated what I could handle. Multi-layer board, complicated power management, and a client who kept shifting the requirements mid-project.

I ended up cancelling at around 60% completion. The client paid a partial amount, Rs 8,100, but the relationship soured. That day genuinely stung. I remember thinking maybe this whole freelancing idea wasn't for me.

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Starting small, which is what actually worked

The second attempt went the opposite direction, a small single-layer PCB for a basic LED driver circuit. The budget was only Rs 3,800, but the scope matched it.

Finished it in two days. Client was happy, left a five-star review. That's what actually rebuilt my confidence.

Honestly, I used to think small projects were a waste of time, too little money for the effort. What I understand now is that small projects build reputation, and reputation is what eventually brings in the bigger ones.

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The role of simulation, which I badly underestimated

At the start, I assumed PCB design just meant drawing the layout, and that simulation was something you only bothered with back in college. That assumption was wrong.

I built a power supply circuit for a client once, skipped simulation entirely, and went straight to layout. The board got manufactured, we tested it physically, and voltage regulation was off. That meant rework, four extra days lost, and a client whose trust took a visible hit.

After that project I made it a hard rule: every circuit, no matter how simple it looks, gets simulated in LTspice first. Post-manufacturing surprises dropped sharply after that.

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The client who wanted everything documented, and what that taught me

One Australian client wanted absolutely everything documented, from the schematic down to a full bill of materials. It felt excessive at first, why does a small project need this much paperwork?

Working with them for a while taught me proper documentation habits that I now apply on every project, whether the client asks for it or not. That habit alone is probably what separates me from a lot of other freelancers doing similar work today.

That same client sent me four more projects over the next 7 months. Total earnings from that one relationship worked out to roughly Rs 36,400.

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The portfolio built before that first client even showed up

Nobody trusts a new freelancer off a resume alone, especially in hardware work where physical proof actually matters. Building a GitHub portfolio to convince clients isn't just a software developer thing. I did exactly that, uploading my schematics and simulation results to GitHub before I'd landed a single paid project.

I put together a small repo with three projects: the LED driver, the Arduino shield, and the power supply board. Each one included simulation screenshots alongside photos of the finished PCB. My first client later told me that repo was the exact reason I got shortlisted over other applicants.

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What the setup looks like now

The daily schedule isn't fixed, it shifts with whatever project is active. Simulation and design work eat up roughly 60% of the time, and the rest goes to client communication, testing, and documentation.

Mechanical engineers doing CAD freelancing run into a strikingly similar process, just with different software. And the approach AutoCAD freelancers use for finding international clients turned out to work almost identically for me early on.

I'm doing this full-time now, haven't gone back to a regular job. Family was a bit uneasy about it initially, the usual "why give up a stable job for this risk" conversation. Nine months in now, and the income has actually started to close in on what the job used to pay, some months even clearing it.

The best part, honestly, is choosing which projects to take on. That was never an option at the job, whatever got assigned was what you did. Now if something sounds tedious or drags on with a difficult client, I can just say no and move on to something that actually holds my attention. That freedom alone feels worth more to me some weeks than whatever the invoice at the end of the month adds up to...