Are Product Engineering and IC Design Jobs Right for Me?

[Timb0Slice]

I like to figure things out. Creating and testing computer hardware such as circuits and processors sounds very interesting to me. Trying to figure out how to make a certain processor faster, and more efficient or trying to organize a circuit to be as small as possible. Or why this certain processor is running too hot, or this motherboard isn't functioning. Things along those lines.

It seems IC designer, working with FPGA's, and applications engineer fit this criteria. Would I enjoy these jobs?, and are there any others I might enjoy?

 

[Simon Bridge]

What jobs fit my interests?

... whichever job you are interested in. You seem to have that figured out.
Where abouts are you in your education?

 

[analogdesign]

From your description it sounds like you would enjoy Product Engineering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_engineering

I used to work for a major semiconductor manufacturer and our Product Engineers were wizards, and they spent their days chasing down difficult problems exactly like you described (for example why is a particular chip running too hot, or how can this board be simplified to reduce cost but still provide reasonable performance).