Performance Engineer, Staff

Qualcomm · Austin · $160,200–$240,200 (stated in the posting)

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General Summary:

We are seeking an experienced systems debug engineer to investigate and resolve complex issues across applications, middleware, RTOS, firmware, drivers, and hardware platforms. This role focuses on deep root cause analysis of problems that span multiple layers of the software and hardware stack, from application failures and performance bottlenecks to silicon defects and system architecture issues.

The ideal candidate is a recognized expert in debugging complex embedded systems and can rapidly isolate issues regardless of whether the root cause resides in the application, operating system, driver stack, firmware, hardware, or system architecture.

Minimum Qualifications:

Key Responsibilities

End-to-End System Debug

• Lead investigations into critical customer, field, and development issues.
• Perform root cause analysis across applications, middleware, RTOS, drivers, firmware, and hardware.
• Debug system crashes, hangs, lockups, watchdog resets, memory corruption, data corruption, and performance regressions.
• Develop systematic debug methodologies that accelerate issue isolation and resolution.

Application and Middleware Debug

• Analyze application failures using logs, traces, profiling tools, debuggers, and instrumentation.
• Debug issues involving multi-threaded, real-time, and distributed applications.
• Investigate API misuse, resource leaks, synchronization errors, memory corruption, deadlocks, race conditions, and performance bottlenecks.
• Correlate application behavior with operating system, driver, and hardware activity.
• Partner with software teams to reproduce, isolate, and resolve customer-reported issues.

RTOS and Operating System Debug

• Debug scheduler, interrupt, memory management, timer, and synchronization issues.
• Analyze real-time performance constraints including latency, jitter, and missed deadlines.
• Investigate kernel crashes, task starvation, priority inversion, and resource contention.
• Develop diagnostic tools and instrumentation to improve system visibility.

Hardware and Silicon Debug

• Debug issues involving processors, memory subsystems, caches, DMA engines, interrupts, and interconnects.
• Utilize JTAG, trace systems, protocol analyzers, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and hardware debug tools.
• Correlate software symptoms with underlying hardware behavior.
• Work with architecture, verification, and silicon teams to identify and resolve complex hardware issues.

Performance Analysis and Optimization

• Profile applications and system software to identify bottlenecks.
• Analyze CPU utilization, memory bandwidth, cache efficiency, interrupt load, and latency.
• Drive improvements in application performance, power efficiency, and system responsiveness.
• Develop automation and tooling to support large-scale performance investigations.

Technical Leadership

• Serve as the escalation point for the most difficult software and hardware issues.
• Mentor engineering teams on debugging techniques and root cause analysis methodologies.
• Author debug guides, postmortems, and best practices.
• Influence hardware and software architectures to improve observability and diagnosability.

Required Qualifications

• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
• Extensive experience debugging embedded and real-time systems.
• Expert knowledge of C/C++.
• Strong understanding of:
  • Application architecture
  • Operating systems
  • RTOS internals
  • Device drivers
  • Firmware
  • Processor architecture
  • Memory systems
  • Interrupt architectures
• Experience with application debugging tools, profilers, crash analysis tools, and tracing infrastructure.
• Strong understanding of multithreading, synchronization, concurrency, and memory management.
• Proven track record solving complex problems that span software and hardware boundaries.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Qualcomm SoCs, DSPs, NPUs, or mobile computing platforms.
• Experience with Linux, Android, QNX, FreeRTOS, ThreadX, or Zephyr.
• Knowledge of ARM architecture, GIC, cache coherency, DMA, and virtualization technologies.
• Experience with performance analysis, power optimization, and silicon bring-up.
• Development of custom debug and telemetry tools.
• Python or scripting experience for automation.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The successful candidate is the engineer everyone calls when the answer to "where is the bug?" is unknown. They can work their way down the entire stack:

Application → Framework → Middleware → Driver → RTOS → Firmware → Hardware → Silicon and determine with confidence where the fault originated, why it occurred, and how to prevent it from recurring. 

Qualcomm is an equal opportunity employer. If you are an individual with a disability and need an accommodation during the application/hiring process, rest assured that Qualcomm is committed to providing an accessible process. You may e-mail disability-accomodations@qualcomm.com or call Qualcomm's toll-free number found here. Upon request, Qualcomm will provide reasonable accommodations to support individuals with disabilities to be able participate in the hiring process. Qualcomm is also committed to making our workplace accessible for individuals with disabilities. (Keep in mind that this email address is used to provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities. We will not respond here to requests for updates on applications or resume inquiries).

To all Staffing and Recruiting Agencies: Our Careers Site is only for individuals seeking a job at Qualcomm. Staffing and recruiting agencies and individuals being represented by an agency are not authorized to use this site or to submit profiles, applications or resumes, and any such submissions will be considered unsolicited. Qualcomm does not accept unsolicited resumes or applications from agencies. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias, Qualcomm employees or any other company location. Qualcomm is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes/applications.

EEO Employer: Qualcomm is an equal opportunity employer; all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, Veteran status, or any other protected classification.

Qualcomm expects its employees to abide by all applicable policies and procedures, including but not limited to security and other requirements regarding protection of Company confidential information and other confidential and/or proprietary information, to the extent those requirements are permissible under applicable law.

Pay range and Other Compensation & Benefits:

The above pay scale reflects the broad, minimum to maximum, pay scale for this job code for the location for which it has been posted. Even more importantly, please note that salary is only one component of total compensation at Qualcomm.  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. Your recruiter will be happy to discuss all that Qualcomm has to offer – and you can review more details about our US benefits at this link.

If you would like more information about this role, please contact Qualcomm Careers.

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