Platform Engineer, Staff

Qualcomm • San Diego, CA

3d • $129,600 - $194,400 • Onsite

About The Position

Qualcomm IT is hiring a Staff-level Platform Engineer to design, build, and govern the GitOps release process, CI/CD automation, and developer tooling for an internal developer platform running on EKS. As part of the broader Cloud Team, the engineer will shape how platform changes are built, versioned, promoted, and released, while improving predictable delivery. This is a hands-on, high-autonomy role requiring deep technical execution and the ability to independently define standards and drive adoption across teams without direct authority.

The position is full-time and onsite in San Diego, California, five days per week. On-call participation is required, including potential 24/7 coverage. The role is not eligible for Qualcomm immigration sponsorship.

The engineer will work across GitOps, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, Kubernetes platform engineering, developer experience, reliability, observability, security, team delivery practices, and cross-team communication. The role also includes mentoring engineers, participating in interviews, and leading resolution of release- and pipeline-related incidents.

Requirements

• At least 7 years of IT-related experience with a bachelor's degree in computer science, Applied Mathematics, or Engineering, or at least 10 years of experience without a degree, with demonstrated progression from technical execution to team-level technical leadership.
• At least 3 years operating Kubernetes in production, including hands-on EKS experience with cluster lifecycle and multi-environment operations.
• Proven experience designing and governing GitOps release processes, including branching strategies, multi-environment promotion, and release versioning and tagging.
• Advanced CI/CD expertise using GitHub Actions or similar tools to build pipelines integrating build, linting, testing, DevSecOps, and Argo CD.
• Strong Terraform expertise, including module development, state management, and multi-environment patterns.
• Strong AWS expertise across networking, IAM, and the EKS ecosystem.
• Track record of driving technical standards and adoption across teams without direct authority.
• Strong Linux and distributed-systems troubleshooting skills across Kubernetes, networking, and AWS.
• Experience with Helm or Kustomize, Kubernetes networking fundamentals, and Cilium.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills for engineering and leadership audiences.
• Platform product thinking, treating developer experience as a product with measurable outcomes.

Nice To Haves

• Kubernetes certifications (CKA, CKAD, or CKS) and/or AWS DevOps Engineer Professional or Solutions Architect certification.
• Experience leading agile or Scrum delivery for an engineering team as a Scrum Master or equivalent; Scrum certification (CSM or PSM) is a plus.
• Experience with gitStream or similar repository automation and automated release/versioning tools such as semantic versioning, release-please, or semantic-release.
• Experience with Karpenter, Kyverno policy-as-code, and Crossplane concepts.
• Demonstrated success building self-service paved-road platform capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and govern the platform GitOps release process using Argo CD, including multi-environment promotion workflows, deployment guardrails, and release documentation; set standards and drive their adoption.
• Own platform infrastructure CI/CD workflow definitions and implement GitHub Actions pipelines integrating builds, linting, testing, DevSecOps scanning, and Argo CD delivery; reduce release lead time and manual toil.
• Define and maintain platform branching strategies and version-tagging schemes, and implement repository and pull request automation using gitStream.
• Build self-service paved-road templates, tooling, and documentation; gather internal user feedback and track adoption with measurable outcomes.
• Support the platform team's agile delivery practices, including sprint planning, sprint goal tracking, daily standups, backlog refinement, and retrospectives; create, prioritize, and delegate backlog work. The role may serve as Scrum Master for candidates with that experience.
• Design and build Terraform modules, state management, and multi-environment patterns, and extend reference implementations and guardrails for consistent, safe infrastructure delivery.
• Contribute to EKS cluster provisioning and lifecycle management in multi-tenant environments, including Karpenter autoscaling, add-on lifecycle management, and cluster upgrades; support safe, repeatable rollouts of cluster changes.
• Evaluate and tune platform services for reliability, performance, and cost efficiency; apply Datadog and Prometheus/Grafana observability standards to pipeline and release health.
• Implement secure-by-default delivery patterns with Kyverno and Cilium in partnership with security stakeholders.
• Communicate release plans, process changes, and delivery health to IT leadership and stakeholder teams; represent the platform in architecture and change reviews.
• Author technical design documents and proposals, validate them with Cloud Team architects, drive implementation, and align CI/CD and GitOps capabilities with the multi-year platform roadmap.
• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers on GitOps, CI/CD, and delivery practices; participate in interview loops and help uphold the hiring bar.
• Contribute to runbook standards and incident response practices; lead resolution of release- and pipeline-related incidents and drive corrective actions.

Benefits

• Competitive annual discretionary bonus program.
• Opportunity for annual RSU grants; employees on sales-incentive plans are not eligible for the annual bonus.
• Competitive benefits package designed to support employees at work, at home, and at play.

What This Job Offers

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