Staff Customer Quality Engineer

Qualcomm•San Diego, CA

8d•$134,800 - $202,200

About The Position

As a CQE (Customer Quality Engineer) / Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) Engineer in Qualcomm's Customer Quality Team, you will be responsible for resolving product quality issues associated with RMAs. You will be assigned products to support RMA evaluation requests submitted by Qualcomm customers. Defect correlation will be performed using system- and device-level evaluation techniques, leveraging a variety of fault-isolation and debug tools, including ATE, X-ray, CSAM, IV curve analysis, bench testing, phone testing, and PFA, among others. In this role, you will support debug and data-gathering activities in partnership with other technical disciplines, including RMAE, across Qualcomm. This position offers the opportunity to significantly influence product quality across the organization through direct interactions with customers and collaboration with cross-functional teams, including Design, Product Test Engineering, Marketing, Manufacturing, and Supply Chain.

Requirements

Minimum of 10 years of experience with digital SoC products, semiconductor & Packaging technologies, and system-level debugging.
Experience analyzing and debugging customer issues involving application processors, CPUs, GPUs, DSPs, AI/NPU subsystems, memory, power management, and modem technologies, including LTE, WCDMA, CDMA, GSM, 1x, EVDO, and UMTS.
Experience in microelectronics, SMT processes, semiconductor fabrication, assembly, and product quality engineering.
Strong experience with quality methodologies, statistical analysis, root-cause investigation, and structured problem-solving techniques.
Strong knowledge of device physics and semiconductor fundamentals.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Engineering, or related field and 4+ years of Hardware Engineering or related work experience.
OR Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Engineering, or related field and 3+ years of Hardware Engineering or related work experience.
OR PhD in Computer Science, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Engineering, or related field and 2+ years of Hardware Engineering or related work experience.

Nice To Haves

Strong understanding of Digital SoC architecture, including CPU, GPU, DSP, NPU/AI accelerators, cache hierarchy, memory subsystems, interconnects, power management, and clocking architectures.
Experience debugging complex SoC-level failures, including boot issues, system hangs, crashes, performance degradation, thermal events, and power-related failures.
Strong knowledge of silicon debug methodologies, failure analysis, fault isolation, and root cause determination for digital semiconductor products.
Experience with hardware/software interaction, including firmware, bootloaders, operating systems, device drivers, and application-level debugging.
Familiarity with power management features such as DVFS, CPR, low-power modes, voltage scaling, and thermal management.
Experience analyzing customer-reported issues involving CPU, GPU, DSP, AI/NPU, memory (DDR/LPDDR), storage, display, camera, audio, connectivity, and modem subsystems.
Working knowledge of semiconductor manufacturing, assembly, package reliability, SMT processes, and failure mechanisms such as EOS, ESD, latch-up, and mechanical damage.
Experience using debug and characterization tools such as ATE, JTAG, scan diagnostics, logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, protocol analyzers, X-ray, CSAM, IV curve tracing, and FA tools.
Strong understanding of silicon validation, product qualification, yield analysis, reliability testing, and customer-return failure analysis methodologies.
Proven ability to lead cross-functional debug efforts involving Design, Product Test Engineering, Failure Analysis, Manufacturing, Reliability, System Engineering, and Software teams.
Strong understanding of smartphone and embedded system architectures, including application processors, memory subsystems, power delivery networks, display, camera, audio, storage, and connectivity functions.
Ability to correlate customer-reported failure symptoms with underlying SoC, hardware, software, or manufacturing-related root causes.
Experience with Android-based systems, system logs, crash analysis, kernel debugging, and performance characterization is highly desirable.
M.S. or Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (or equivalent).

Responsibilities

Provide leadership and lead/support major customer issues to resolution, reduce occurrences of No Fault Found & common mishandling issues such as EOS, ESD, Mechanical damage and SMT Reflow.
Conduct technical evaluations of customer returned devices at system and device level utilizing tools such as ATE, XRAY, CSAM, IV curve and bench leading to a clear path of root cause.
Act as the conduit between Qualcomm's customer, Product Core Team and Branch CQE. Introduce, implement, and improve processes (when necessary) between Customer/Branch & Qualcomm.
Track actions, schedules and owners to maintain targeted RMA analysis cycle time. Initiate internal corrective actions where applicable.
Drive improvement of internal quality systems with the goal of reducing outgoing product quality DPPM.
Provide customer prospective (voice of customer) to internal stakeholders with the view to driving customer satisfaction metrics higher.
Define priority among customer corrective actions to be taken within Qualcomm and guide the implementation within internal teams.
Support the preparation of weekly, monthly, and quarterly progress reports for problem-solving teams and management.
Update customers in a timely fashion regarding the status of open quality issues or support requests.