Staff Engineer – LLVM/Ripple Compiler

Qualcomm • San Diego, CA

6d

About The Position

Qualcomm is seeking a highly skilled Staff Engineer to drive development of LLVM‑Ripple, its compiler toolchain, and the supporting ecosystem that enables highly‑parallel application development on Snapdragon platforms. In this role, you will design, develop, optimize, and maintain compiler components, parallel runtimes, and developer‑facing features that significantly improve the programming experience for massively parallel applications targeting heterogeneous compute architectures.
You will work closely with architecture teams, runtime engineers, and application developers to evolve the Ripple programming model, enhance performance portability, and expand compiler and runtime capabilities. This position requires deep expertise in compiler internals, parallel programming models, and performance optimization on modern SoCs.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field and 8+ years of software engineering experience OR
• Master’s degree in the same fields and 6+ years of experience OR
• PhD and 3+ years of experience.
• Strong experience with LLVM development, including IR transformations, back‑end targets, code generation, or compiler toolchain design.
• Expertise in parallel programming models, such as: CUDA OpenCL OpenMP SIMD/SIMT programming GPU programming models or heterogeneous compute frameworks
• Proficiency with C/C++ and modern compiler engineering practices.
• Experience with runtime systems, concurrency, or parallel execution models.
• Strong debugging, performance analysis, and optimization skills.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 4+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience.
• Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 3+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience.
• PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 2+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience.

Nice To Haves

• Experience contributing to upstream LLVM or similar large open‑source compiler projects.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and development of LLVM‑Ripple compiler components, including front‑end extensions, middle‑end optimizations, back‑end code generation, and tooling support.
• Architect and implement improvements to parallel runtimes, including scheduling, memory models, synchronization, and heterogeneous workloads targeting Snapdragon processors.
• Define and evolve programming abstractions to improve developer experience for highly parallel and heterogeneous applications.
• Collaborate with hardware architecture teams to model and expose new parallel features, SIMD/SIMT execution models, and accelerator capabilities through compiler and runtime interfaces.
• Drive performance analysis, benchmarking, and optimization across the full Ripple ecosystem: compiler, runtime, libraries, and application workloads.
• Deliver high‑quality, maintainable code and documentation; contribute upstream to LLVM and Ripple where appropriate.
• Provide technical mentorship, code reviews, and guidance to junior engineers.
• Work cross‑functionally with internal customers to enable new use cases, improve toolchain reliability, and enhance developer workflows.

Benefits

• We also offer a competitive annual discretionary bonus program and opportunity for annual RSU grants (employees on sales-incentive plans are not eligible for our annual bonus). In addition, our 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
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees