Staff software engineer

Company:

Qualcomm Atheros, Inc.

Job Area:

Engineering Group, Engineering Group > Software 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.

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.

What Success Looks like:

• Hands-on technical depth: You write production-quality C/C++ firmware daily — this is not a coordination or review-only role.

• Architectural ownership: You drive design decisions independently, evaluate trade-offs, and document them for long-term team knowledge.

• Cross-functional influence: You collaborate as a peer with chip designers, RF engineers, and hardware board engineers — not just as a consumer of their work.

• Mentorship and code quality: You actively raise the bar for junior and mid-level engineers through design reviews, pairing, and constructive feedback.

• Problem ownership: You take complex, ambiguous debug problems from initial triage through root cause and verified fix, without needing direction at each step.

AI-First Engineering Culture

This team treats generative AI tools as force multipliers, not optional add-ons. Every engineer — from new hires to staff — is expected to use AI coding assistants, MCP-powered analysis tools, and LLM-based agent workflows as part of their daily development loop. That means generating firmware code with AI, reviewing AI-produced diffs with the same rigor applied to human-authored code, using AI agents to accelerate crash triage and root cause analysis, and contributing improvements to the team's shared AI toolchain. Engineers who thrive here are not intimidated by AI-generated output and are not uncritical of it — they know how to direct it, validate it against hardware specs and architecture constraints, and push the quality bar higher over time.

What you'll use:

• AI coding assistants — Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor for firmware generation, diff review, and HAL-PHY register access iteration

• MCP server toolchains — cscope MCP for symbol navigation, swi-hw-sw MCP for SWI contract verification, SmartScope and TimeTravel for crash dump triage and root cause attribution

• LLMCommittee automated code review — AI-driven multi-model review pipeline for pre-submit quality gating

• AI-assisted SDLC pipelines — req-analysis, sw-sdd, and code-gen agents spanning requirements through implementation

• LLM-based crash triage and regression RCA — FACT-RCA knowledge base, AI-generated hypotheses cross-checked against memory dumps and log data

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

Minimum Qualifications:

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

OR
Master's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 3+ years of Software Engineering or related work experience.
OR
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.

Preferred Qualifications:

• 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.

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 [email protected] 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).

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Pay range and Other Compensation & Benefits :

$151,900.00 - $227,900.00

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 .