Senior System Performance Engineer - Data Center/AI

Company:

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Job Area:

Engineering Group, Engineering Group > PPT Systems Engineering

General Summary:

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. As a Qualcomm Systems Engineer, you will research, design, develop, simulate, and validate system-level software, hardware, architecture, algorithms, and solutions that enable the development of cutting-edge technology.

Qualcomm's System Performance Team is responsible for optimizing and validating the performance, power efficiency, and scalability of advanced computing, AI, and datacenter platforms. The team collaborates closely with hardware, software, architecture, and product teams to ensure industry-leading performance across a broad range of workloads and use cases.

In the role of System Performance Engineer, you will work with software, hardware, and architecture teams to analyze and optimize power, performance, and thermal behavior of complex systems. You will leverage your systems knowledge and analytical skills to profile workloads, identify bottlenecks, validate performance, and help ensure product requirements are met.

Key Responsibilities

• Enable, profile, and analyze complex AI, machine learning, high-performance computing, and concurrent system workloads in both emulation and software environments.
• Execute performance and power analysis plans for workloads spanning compute, memory, storage, networking, accelerator, and concurrent system scenarios.
• Identify areas of performance, power, and efficiency optimization across SoC hardware and software architectures.
• Analyze and triage performance, power, and scalability issues, determine root causes, and communicate findings to stakeholders.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including product management, hardware, software, and architecture teams to improve system performance and efficiency.
• Evaluate emerging AI/ML and datacenter workloads to understand system behavior and identify optimization opportunities.
• Support more junior engineers through technical guidance, reviews, and knowledge sharing.
• Prepare clear and concise reports, technical documentation, and presentations to communicate findings and recommendations.
• Develop automation, tooling, and analysis infrastructure to improve engineering productivity and streamline performance investigations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• 4+ years of practical post-silicon experience in power and performance analysis of complex SoCs.
• Strong programming and scripting skills (Python, C/C++).
• Strong communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills.
• Self-starter with the ability to work independently on technical investigations.
• Knowledge of modern AI/ML and Large Language Model (LLM) workloads and their performance characteristics.
• Strong understanding of memory hierarchy, cache systems, and high-performance system interconnects.
• Understanding of ARM SoC concepts and architecture specifications such as SMMU, GIC, Coresight-PMU, and various bus interface protocols.
• Understanding of industry-standard performance and power benchmarks, workload characterization, and system-level interactions.
• Experience with system performance analysis methodologies, profiling techniques, and performance monitoring infrastructure.
• Strong computer architecture and hardware fundamentals.
• Understanding of software power-management frameworks, operating-system scheduling, and resource-management behavior.
• Familiarity with distributed computing, AI infrastructure, and datacenter system concepts is a plus.

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:

$129,500.00 - $194,300.00

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.