Sr Staff Engineer - Verification, CI/CD Infrastructure & Embedded Hardware (AISW)

Qualcomm; Oakland (CA); On-site; USD 186,000 - 279,000; Full time

Job summary

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer to design and scale CI/CD pipelines and embedded hardware verification for the AI software stack, including QNN HTP and QAIRT. The role is hands-on, building large-scale automated pipelines and integrating DSP/NPU test execution with target-based regression infrastructure.

You will own coverage strategies, reduce flakiness, and influence DevOps and firmware teams while driving reproducible HW testing workflows and robust toolchains.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in CI/CD engineering, verification, embedded systems, or runtime/toolchain development.
• Expertise designing/scaling CI/CD (Buildkite, Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions).
• Deep experience integrating embedded hardware into automated pipelines.
• Background in firmware flashing, device provisioning, power/reset automation, and board-farm debugging.
• Strong scripting/programming in Python, Bash, C/C++.
• Experience maintaining open-source verification pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Architect and scale large-distributed CI/CD systems with high throughput and low flakiness.
• Design automated workflows: build, package, deploy, flash, run, log-collection, triage, dashboarding.
• Develop scheduling/orchestration layers for thousands of HW-based regression tests.
• Implement monitoring, telemetry, and automated mitigation for CI stability.
• Develop embedded target test frameworks across DSP/NPU.
• Automate flashing, provisioning, power/reset, and new chipset bring-up.
• Design hardware-in-loop validation for stability and performance.
• Maintain CI/verification pipelines for internal and open-source projects.

Skills

CI/CD engineering

Embedded systems

Verification

Python

Bash

C/C++

DevOps collaboration

AI stack

Open-source pipelines

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Master's degree in CS/Engineering

PhD in CS/Engineering

Tools

Buildkite

Jenkins

GitLab CI

GitHub Actions

Board bring-up tooling

Job description

Company

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Job Area

Engineering Group, Engineering Group > Machine Learning Engineering

General Summary

The Sr Staff Engineer Engineer, Verification (CI/CD & Embedded HW) is a senior individual contributor responsible for designing, scaling, and hardening CI/CD infrastructure and verification systems that validate Qualcomm’s AI Software stack—including QNN HTP, QAIRT, toolchains, kernels, and embedded runtime components. This role is deeply technical and hands-on: you will build large-scale automated pipelines, integrate embedded hardware (DSP, NPU) test execution, drive target-based regression infrastructure, and ensure efficient, reliable, and high-signal validation at scale. You can apply past experience managing large CI/CD pipelines to quickly target issues that arise to a software and/or hardware level.

Key Responsibilities (IC-Focused)

CI/CD Infrastructure Architecture & Scaling

• Architect and scale large-distributed CI/CD systems with high throughput and low flakiness.
• Design automated workflows: build, package, deploy, flash, run, log-collection, triage, dashboarding.
• Develop scheduling/orchestration layers for thousands of HW-based regression tests.
• Implement monitoring, telemetry, and automated mitigation for CI stability.

Embedded Hardware Validation & Automation

• Develop embedded target test frameworks across DSP/NPU.
• Automate flashing, provisioning, power/reset, and new chipset bring-up.
• Design hardware-in-loop validation for stability, thermal, long-run correctness, and performance.

Test Strategy, Coverage Expansion & Signal Improvement

• Own coverage strategy for throughput, correctness, memory behavior, and runtime scheduling.
• Develop automated triage signals and failure classification systems.
• Eliminate flakiness and nondeterminism in HW test environments.

Open-Source & Internal Pipeline Ownership

• Maintain CI/verification pipelines for internal and open-source projects.
• Enforce PR gating, reproducible builds, artifact management, and API correctness.

Cross-Functional Influence

• Influence DevOps, firmware, and platform teams using data-driven insights.
• Lead technical deep-dives on CI and embedded HW failures.
• Align infrastructure capabilities with program milestones and customer requirements.

Documentation & Process Engineering

• Produce high-quality documentation for CI architecture, HW frameworks, and best practices.
• Drive continuous improvement and streamline reproducible HW testing workflows.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years in CI/CD engineering, verification, embedded systems, or runtime/toolchain development.
• Expertise designing/scaling CI/CD (Buildkite, Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions).
• Deep experience integrating embedded hardware into automated pipelines.
• Background in firmware flashing, device provisioning, power/reset automation, and board-farm debugging.
• Strong scripting/programming in Python, Bash, C/C++.
• Experience maintaining open-source verification pipelines.
• Strong debugging across runtime/driver/inference layers.
• Ability to influence cross-functional engineering teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with Qualcomm AI stack (QNN, QAIRT, SNPE).
• Experience with heterogeneous compute validation (DSP/GPU/CPU/NPU).
• Background in silicon bring-up or hardware-in-loop systems.
• Experience with large device-farm operation and automation.

Success Indicators

• Highly stable, scalable CI/CD pipelines with reduced failures/flakiness.
• Faster regression turnaround and increased throughput.
• Strong embedded target coverage with reproducible signals.
• Positive feedback from global engineering teams.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 6+ 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 5+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience.
• PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 4+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience.

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Pay range and Other Compensation & Benefits

$185,900.00 - $278,900.00

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.