Emulation Performance/Debug Engineer
$121,800 - $182,600 USD yearly
Originally posted 10 September 2026 by the employer.
Work with emulation platforms like FPGA Prototyping, Veloce, and Palladium.
About the role
This role involves the overall development and support of SoC pre-silicon platforms within Qualcomm's central SoC digital hardware organization, focusing on emulation for complex SoC designs.
What you'll do
- Design, develop, and deploy uniform global methodologies for emulation build generation and debug across FPGA-based emulation platforms.
- Bring up new FPGA emulation/prototyping hardware and software.
- Debug low-level software and hardware issues.
- Validate and debug digital circuits.
- Perform pre-silicon prototyping for new SoC designs, including enablement and bring-up.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's degree in Science, Engineering, or related field and 2+ years of ASIC design, verification, validation, integration, or related work experience, OR Master's degree in Science, Engineering, or related field and 1+ year of ASIC design, verification, validation, integration, or related work experience, OR PhD in Science, Engineering, or related field.
- Experience in Emulation Platforms (FPGA Prototyping, Veloce, Palladium).
- Experience with Emulation tools (Synthesis, Place and Route, Constraints, Clocking, Timing Closure).
- Experience with System Debug (Waveform generation and Content Debug support).
- Expertise in Verilog / SystemVerilog.
- Proficiency in Python, TCL scripting.
- Expertise with Xilinx/Intel FPGAs, Tools, and timing closure techniques.
Nice to have
- 5 years of experience working in emulation and silicon environments.
- Experience with CPU/DSP Core, Multimedia, IO, Peripherals, DDR, Modem, Bus Protocols SoC functionality.
- Experience with debug tools including JTAG and kernel debuggers.
- Understanding of CPU and SoC architectures, with SoC building blocks (interconnects, power management, PMIC, NoC, peripherals).
- Basic understanding of power and performance.
- Experience with C programming.
Skills: emulation, FPGA, pre-silicon prototyping, Verilog, Xilinx/Intel FPGAs
This role has been open 34 days — well below the 57-day median for FPGA Design roles.
FPGA Design · RTL Design
|
Open roles in category
104
|
Median days open
57 d
|
Median salary
$162k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (104 roles · 27 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 8 | 104 |
| Median days open | 39 d | 57 d (−18 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $162k |
Skills observed across this category: emulation, FPGA, pre-silicon prototyping, Verilog, Xilinx/Intel FPGAs
Who's hiring in this category
- Altera · 29 open roles · median 58 d
- AMD · 12 open roles · median 48 d
- Teradyne · 10 open roles · median 67 d
- Qualcomm (this employer) · 8 open roles · median 39 d
- Microchip Technology · 6 open roles · median 90 d
- Keysight Technologies · 5 open roles · median 7 d
How we counted: 104 open FPGA Design (RTL Design) roles from 27 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 15 Oct 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there. Figures refresh nightly.