Modem Software Engineer

Qualcomm • San Diego, CA

5d • $109,400 - $164,200

About The Position

The Wireless Research and Development (WRD) Technology division is seeking a motivated engineer to join the Modem Performance and Architecture team within the Modem Power and Performance (MPP) organization. This is a high‑visibility individual contributor role with direct impact to Qualcomm’s next‑generation modem products and help shape the long-term modem roadmap. In this role, you will work in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment across software, hardware, and systems engineering teams to analyze real modem workloads, evaluate architectural trade-offs and drive measurable improvements in performance, power, and efficiency. The team plays a critical role in ensuring that modem designs meet aggressive performance goals and scalability targets across Qualcomm’s expanding product portfolio including the next generation of intelligent edge devices, such as AI-Native 6G smartphones, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and IOT devices. Over time, engineers in this position will have the opportunity to gain end-to-end exposure to the product lifecycle – from early‑stage architectural exploration and pre-silicon analysis through post‑silicon validation and commercialization – making this an ideal opportunity for individuals who thrive at the intersection of deep technical work and system‑level impact. If you are an engineer driven by technically challenging problems, energized by work at the intersection of software and architecture, and excited to see your work directly influence products at scale, we encourage you to apply.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to reason about complex systems.
• Strong fundamentals in computer architecture, including processors, memory systems, embedded real-time systems, operating systems, and low-level programming.
• Ability to deliver quantifiable improvements in code performance through techniques including, but not limited to, architectural redesign, compiler optimizations, hardware acceleration, and multithreading
• Experience working with embedded software development using C/C++ (or ASM) with RTOS schedulers and kernel modules.
• Strong programming capabilities with C (or C++) and Python.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or Electrical Engineering (or foreign academic equivalent).
• Up to five (5) years of cumulative work experience in a relevant field.
• Experience contributing to performance analysis, and/or optimization on embedded systems.
• Experience using Python for tooling, data analysis, ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch), or automation.
• Debug experience using JTAG or equivalent hardware/software debug tools.
• Exposure to compiler technology, low-level performance tuning, or system-on-chip (SoC) architecture.
• Working knowledge of wireless protocols and technologies.
• Proven ability to collaborate effectively across multi-disciplinary teams.
• Familiarity with traditional machine learning and/or generative AI.

Responsibilities

• Play key significant role for several foundational architectural initiatives that are expected to influence multiple future generations of Qualcomm modem and Compute products
• Contribute to innovations and inventions covering advanced memory architecture and optimization, performance optimization, cache level compression/decompression, and related technologies.
• Address critical challenges across power/performance/area (PPA), memory efficiency, reliability, security, software productivity, and platform scalability while helping shape future modem and DSP roadmaps
• Help drive strategic initiatives focused on platform robustness, security, and debuggability
• Define and evaluate SoC-level performance requirements, including latency, throughput, and bandwidth constraints, and assess architectural trade-offs against these requirements.
• Participate in pre-silicon performance evaluations, architectural exploration, and performance sign-off activities.
• Analyze real-world modem workloads to identify performance and efficiency bottlenecks, and propose or implement solutions across software optimization, task design, SW/HW partitioning, cache utilization, and memory behavior.
• Apply data-driven analysis techniques, including traditional ML methods where appropriate, to large performance datasets spanning multiple modem and chipset generations.
• Develop, enhance, and maintain tools for silicon profiling, performance validation, and debug to support the above activities.

Benefits

• competitive annual discretionary bonus program
• opportunity for annual RSU grants
• highly competitive benefits package is designed to support your success at work, at home, and at play

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level