Staff Software Engineer - WLAN
About The Position
As a leading technology innovator, Qualcomm pushes the boundaries of what's possible to enable next-generation experiences and drives digital transformation to help create a smarter, connected future for all. We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the WLAN HAL-PHY firmware team. At this level, you are expected to bring deep, hands-on technical expertise across the full firmware development lifecycle — from architecture through lab bring-up and customer release. You will serve as a technical anchor on the team: setting design direction, driving silicon validation, and elevating the quality of firmware across next-generation WLAN chipsets. The team has fully adopted AI-assisted development workflows — spanning Claude Code and GitHub Copilot for firmware generation, MCP-based servers for register lookup and crash triage, and end-to-end AI agent pipelines that span requirements analysis through code review. Candidates should be comfortable using these tools daily and are expected to contribute to their evolution as the team's AI toolchain matures.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 4+ years of Software Engineering or related work experience.
- Master's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 3+ years of Software Engineering or related work experience.
- PhD in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 2+ years of Software Engineering or related work experience.
- 2+ years of work experience with Programming Language such as C, C++, Java, Python, etc.
Nice To Haves
- Master's Degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science or related field.
- 8+ years of Software Engineering or related work experience.
- 3+ years of experience with Database Management Software.
- 3+ years of experience with API.
- 1+ year of work experience with Git, Perforce, or Source Code Management System.
Responsibilities
- Lead software architecture enhancements using established SW design patterns; re-architect existing firmware modules and design new ones from the ground up
- Write, review, and own production-quality low-level firmware in a resource-constrained embedded environment (small memory footprint DSP/ARM processors)
- Develop WLAN offload firmware running on dedicated co-processor cores, independent of the host processor
- Diagnose and resolve complex WLAN and RF system performance issues; analyze power, spectrum, and waveform quality using RF test equipment and IQ capture data
- Design, implement, unit test, and document features for next-generation WLAN platforms (802.11be and beyond)
- Partner with chip designers, hardware board engineers, and RF specialists during silicon bring-up and lab validation
- Optimize firmware for maximum throughput and minimal latency; profile and eliminate bottlenecks
- Support customer launch and release cycles; resolve production field issues — occasional travel to customer sites may be required
- Use AI coding assistants (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor) as active partners during firmware development — generating boilerplate, reviewing diffs, and iterating on HAL-PHY register access logic — while exercising senior-level judgment to validate and refine AI output against hardware specifications and existing architecture patterns
- Leverage MCP (Model Context Protocol) server toolchains for code navigation, HW register lookup, crash dump analysis, and root cause attribution — including tools such as cscope MCP for symbol search, swi-hw-sw MCP for SWI contract verification, and SmartScope/TimeTravel for crash triage — reducing manual investigation cycles on complex firmware failures
- Participate in and help refine the team's AI-assisted SDLC pipeline, which spans LLM-based requirements analysis, SW SDD generation, automated code review (via LLMCommittee), and on-device test recommendation — providing feedback on AI-generated artifacts, catching hallucinations or mismatched assumptions, and improving prompt and workflow quality over time
- Drive technical documentation standards and code review culture across the team
Benefits
- competitive annual discretionary bonus program
- opportunity for annual RSU grants
- highly competitive benefits package
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
