Application/DevOps Platform Engineer

Company:

Qualcomm Incorporated

Job Area:

Information Technology Group, Information Technology Group > IT Engineering

General Summary:

We are seeking an experienced Application Platform Engineer / Platform DevOps Engineer to design, build, and operate enterprise-grade application platform services. This role is focused on platform engineering and operations, providing scalable, secure, and standardized platforms that enable application teams to build, deploy, and operate their workloads efficiently.

You will own the underlying platform infrastructure—including Kubernetes, Jenkins, CI/CD enablement, and shared services—while partnering closely with application development teams, security, and enterprise engineering stakeholders. This role does not involve application development or pipeline authoring for tenants, but instead focuses on platform reliability, automation, governance, and self-service enablement.

This role requires full-time onsite work in San Diego, CA (5 days per week).

This role is not eligible for Qualcomm immigration sponsorship.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or related field.
OR
1+ year of IT-related work experience with a Bachelor’s degree in a non-technical field.
OR
3+ years of IT-related work experience with a High school diploma or equivalent.

*Completed advanced degree in a relevant field may be substituted for up to one year (Master’s = one year) of work experience.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the design, implementation, and lifecycle management of shared application platforms, including Kubernetes clusters and Jenkins infrastructure
• Operate enterprise Jenkins as a service, supporting both shared and dedicated controller models with strong tenancy isolation and RBAC
• Build and maintain secure, scalable Kubernetes platforms for hosting internal applications and CI/CD workloads
• Define and enforce platform standards, guardrails, and best practices for application onboarding and operations
• Partner with application teams to enable smooth onboarding, troubleshooting, and production readiness—without owning application code or pipelines
• Drive automation-first operations for provisioning, upgrades, patching, and lifecycle management of platform components
• Collaborate with security teams to implement secure-by-default platform architectures, including secrets management, certificate handling, and network controls
• Ensure high platform reliability through monitoring, alerting, capacity planning, and incident response
• Continuously improve platform scalability, performance, and developer experience

 

Minimum Qualifications

• 3+ years of relevant IT experience with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field or 5+ years of relevant experience without
• Strong experience in Linux system administration, including troubleshooting, performance tuning, and OS-level security hardening
• Hands-on expertise with containerization using Docker, including:
  • Image and container lifecycle management
  • Dockerfile authoring and image optimization
  • Container networking and runtime troubleshooting
• Deep understanding of Kubernetes platform operations, including:
  • Control plane and worker node architecture
  • Pods, Deployments, Services, Ingress, and networking fundamentals
  • Authoring and managing Kubernetes manifests and Helm-based deployments
  • Cluster upgrades, scaling, backup/restore, and lifecycle management
• Proven experience administering Jenkins infrastructure at scale, including:
  • Jenkins controller and agent architecture
  • Installation, upgrades, plugin governance, and configuration management
  • Supporting shared and multi-tenant CI environments
  • Container-based Jenkins agents on Kubernetes
• Strong knowledge of CI/CD platform concepts, including:
  • Pipeline enablement frameworks and standards
  • Build, test, and deployment automation patterns
  • CI platform reliability and capacity planning
• Hands-on experience with monitoring and observability platforms such as Splunk and Datadog, including:
  • Platform-level dashboards and alerting
  • SLA/SLO tracking
  • Log analysis and incident troubleshooting
• Experience provisioning and operating cloud infrastructure, with working knowledge of AWS services such as:
  • EC2, S3, IAM, VPC
  • Baseline cloud security controls and cost monitoring
• Strong fundamentals in networking, including DNS, IP addressing, routing, load balancing, and connectivity troubleshooting
• Ability to build automation using Shell, Python, or similar scripting languages
• Experience with Git-based version control, including branching strategies and repository governance
• Excellent problem-solving skills across platform, infrastructure, and CI/CD layers
• Strong professional attributes including ownership mindset, operational discipline, collaboration, and accountability

Preferred Qualifications

• Practical experience with platform engineering or DevOps enablement teams in large enterprise environments
• Experience operating microservices platforms on Kubernetes, including:
  • Secure service-to-service communication
  • Platform-level observability (metrics, logs, traces)
  • Traffic routing and policy enforcement
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes ingress and traffic management, including:
  • Gateway API, NGINX Ingress, Kong
  • Enterprise API management platforms such as Apigee
• Experience with service mesh technologies (Istio or equivalent) for security, traffic management, and observability
• Familiarity with Kubernetes load-balancing solutions such as MetalLB
• Hands-on experience with HashiCorp Vault for:
  • Centralized secrets management
  • Dynamic credential generation
  • Tenant self-service workflows
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform, CloudFormation, or equivalent
• Exposure to security and compliance practices, including:
  • Certificate lifecycle management
  • IAM and RBAC
  • Secrets handling and Kubernetes network policies
• Familiarity with GitOps-based deployment models and related tooling (Argo CD, Flux, or similar)
• Industry-recognized certifications such as CKA, CKAD, or equivalent
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to translate platform capabilities into clear guidance for application teams
• Demonstrated commitment to continuous learning and platform modernization
• Experience working with Apigee API management platform, including API proxy development, policy configuration, and troubleshooting in enterprise environments.

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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:

$38.85 - $58.25

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.