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While 2020 may have been a year most would rather forget — for us at Fidus, it was special.
Fidus is now 20 years old! And as we celebrate 20 years of success, despite the challenges of COVID-19, we are seeing growth, yet again.
When we went into lockdown last March, we made a commitment not to make any layoffs or pay cuts, or to force staff into a reduced work week. Now, nearly a year later, we’ve not only maintained our staff, we’ve actually grown — adding capable individuals to our teams, building our company strength. This has been our consistent pattern; in our 20 years we’ve completed over 3,000 projects with more than 400 customers. We’re grateful to our dedicated staff, loyal customers and world-class partners for helping us reach this milestone.
Where we started
Having started as a specialist design engineering partner in board design, we’ve succeeded in achieving consistent growth for the past 20 years. Every year we’ve challenged ourselves by setting, and meeting, impressive milestones. It’s how we’ve grown to become North America’s leading design partner in technologies as varied as PCB layout, to signal and power integrity, to FPGA. Our trusted team of some of the most experienced designers in the industry has granted us the reputation of constantly delivering the highest-quality designs on time and on budget. It’s also enabled us to be selected as strategic partners of some of the leading names in the industry, like Xilinx, Analog Devices, Lattice, and Synopsys to name just a few.
How we are doing
One of the highlights at Fidus is the culture we’ve nurtured. Despite being a well-established firm of 20 years, the daily buzz of the brightest minds working on the latest technologies makes it feel like a startup. We have a habit of taking good ideas from any employee and implementing them straight away. Why wait? It’s one of the reasons we’ve been able to attract the greatest talent in Canada and North America, nurturing local talent and doing our part to deliver amazing solutions to our customers.
We are thankful to our all of our Fidus families – staff, customers and partners — we couldn’t have come this far without you, and we can’t wait to see what we will do together in the next 20 years!
Fidus is partnering with Carleton University to support hands-on FPGA education through industry-aligned hardware, practical learning environments, and direct exposure to modern design workflows. This collaboration reflects a shared commitment to strengthening Canada’s engineering talent pipeline and bridging the gap between academic learning and real-world embedded-system development.
Engineering leaders are under increasing pressure to deliver more complex systems with fewer internal resources. FPGA logic grows more demanding, embedded software expands faster than teams can staff, and board level designs now require deeper integration across hardware and firmware. This playbook gives leaders a clear framework for understanding when external engineering support becomes essential, how to choose an engagement model that protects quality and schedule, and what separates productive collaborations from the ones that create risk. Drawing on lessons from hundreds of advanced development programs, it outlines how to scale engineering capacity without slowing execution or sacrificing control.
Hardware doesn’t move at software speed — and that’s okay. Here’s what decision-makers need to know about realistic timelines when partnering with an embedded systems design services company like Fidus.
Trust us to deliver on time. That’s why 95% of our customers come back.
