Jobs and Careers

Sr. Staff Software Engineer

qualcomm

San Diego, United Statesfull_timeVerifiedPosted 2 Apr 2026

💰 $244,000/yr($162,600/yr – $244,000/yr)

About the role

Company:

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Job Area:

Engineering Group, Engineering Group > Software Engineering

General Summary:

As a leading technology innovator, Qualcomm pushes the boundaries of what is possible to enable next-generation experiences and drive digital transformation to help create a smarter, connected future for all. As a Qualcomm Software Engineer, you will design, develop, create, modify, and validate embedded and cloud edge software applications across subsystems—Multimedia, AI/Gen AI, and Computer Vision—and/or specialized utility programs that launch cutting-edge, world-class products that meet and exceed customer needs. Qualcomm Software Engineers collaborate with systems, hardware, architecture, and test engineers, as well as other teams, to design system-level software solutions and obtain information on performance requirements and interfaces.

Design and develop Multimedia, AI, and Gen AI SDKs/framework components to facilitate end-application development across various categories of IoT products, such as drones, IP/security cameras, AI boxes, and media devices.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 6+ years of Software Engineering or related work experience.
OR
Master's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 5+ years of Software Engineering or related work experience.
OR
PhD in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 4+ years of Software Engineering or related work experience.

• 3+ years of work experience with Programming Language such as C, C++, Java, Python, etc.

Preferred Qualifications:

8+ years of experience programming in C and C++, building high-performance software for embedded and industrial systems.
8+ years of experience designing and leading real-time embedded and industrial solutions, with strong hands-on technical delivery.
4+ years of experience with GStreamer, developing AI and multimedia product applications using open-source media pipelines.
Strong experience with AI and GenAI inference frameworks including Py-Torch, TensorFlow, ONNX Runtime, and Llama CPP, with solid understanding of AI fundamentals, model architectures, tensor layouts, tensor conversions, and tensor-processing mathematics.
Experience with GenAI orchestration frameworks such as Lang-Chain, LlamaIndex including building agentic systems and RAG-based pipelines & applications.
Experience with multimedia frameworks on Android, Tizen, and other operating systems, with deep understanding of underlying HALs for camera, audio, video, graphics/display, CV, and USB/UVC.
Strong knowledge of Android frameworks, including AIDL/HIDL, Binder, system and vendor services, and Java/JNI bindings.
Experience building AI applications for vision and audio, including classical models such as classification, detection, segmentation, and pose estimation, as well as GenAI-based applications. Skilled in pre- and post-processing of tensors and integrating AI models into end-to-end pipelines across diverse media sources such as camera, audio, and text.
Strong background in Linux system-level programming, including multithreading, concurrency, DMAs/IONs, IPC mechanisms such as Binder and gRPC, and zero-copy architectures.
Experience writing GLES/GLSL shaders and working with programmable graphics/GPU pipelines.
Experience writing Vulkan shaders and working with modern programmable graphics pipelines.
Hands-on experience with Docker and containers, including familiarity with OCI container standards and specifications.
Proven development experience across Linux Embedded, Ubuntu, and Android software stacks.
End-to-end experience across the full software development lifecycle, including design, implementation, deployment, and support.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities:

Provide technical leadership in the design, development, implementation, and validation of embedded edge software, applications, and specialized utility programs.
Lead the architecture and development of multimedia, AI, and GenAI SDKs, driving execution across engineering teams.
Own the design and development of GStreamer-based QIM SDK (Qualcomm Intelligent Multimedia SDK) plugins for Qualcomm hardware platforms.
Define and deliver software features across divers