Engineer, Staff – Ambient AI Technology
$134,800 - $202,200 USD yearly
Originally posted 19 August 2026 by the employer.
Architect, develop, integrate, and commercialize the Ambient Perception Platform across Android, Linux, Windows, XR, automotive, and IoT platforms.
About the role
This role involves leading the architecture and evolution of Ambient Perception frameworks, context awareness engines, multimodal data collection systems, and low-power AI runtime platforms. This work powers future AI assistants, proactive experiences, multimodal sensing systems, and heterogeneous computing frameworks that operate across CPU, DSP, and NPU.
What you'll do
- Lead architecture design and evolution for Ambient Perception frameworks.
- Define context awareness engines and multimodal data collection systems.
- Develop secure data delivery and storage architectures.
- Architect and optimize low-power AI runtime platforms.
- Influence software architecture for autonomous edge intelligence solutions.
- Optimize performance across CPU, DSP, and NPU.
What you'll need
- 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.
Nice to have
- 8–12 years of combined software architecture, embedded systems development, and platform integration experience.
- Strong programming skills in C, C++, and Python.
- Experience developing software on ARM-based and heterogeneous SoC architectures.
- Experience leading architecture design, technical roadmaps, and cross-functional engineering initiatives.
- Experience architecting SDKs, middleware, or platform frameworks for AI-enabled applications.
- Strong understanding of Ambient Perception, context-aware computing, and multimodal sensing systems.
- Knowledge of On-Device AI workload optimization across CPU, DSP, NPU, and GPU architectures.
- Experience developing software on ARM, DSP, and heterogeneous computing platforms.
- Strong understanding of low-power system design, workload offloading, and always-on architectures.
- Experience with power, performance, memory, and latency optimization for edge AI applications.
- Familiarity with IPC, shared memory frameworks, and heterogeneous compute scheduling.
- Experience with Linux kernel architecture, driver development, and system debugging.
- Familiarity with AI safety, model governance, privacy-preserving AI, and responsible AI deployment practices.
Skills: Ambient Perception Platform, low-power AI runtime platforms, edge AI, heterogeneous computing, CPU, DSP, NPU
This role has been open 57 days — slightly above the 56-day median for Infrastructure/Platform Software roles.
Infrastructure/Platform Software · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
98
|
Median days open
56 d
|
Median salary
$220k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (98 roles · 29 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 22 | 98 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 708 | 6157 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 54 d | 56 d (−2 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $220k |
Skills observed across this category: Ambient Perception Platform, low-power AI runtime platforms, edge AI, heterogeneous computing, CPU, DSP, NPU
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm (this employer) · 21 open roles · median 55 d
- NVIDIA · 19 open roles · median 53 d
- AMD · 7 open roles · median 45 d
- Intel Corporation · 6 open roles · median 30 d
- Micron Technology · 6 open roles · median 39 d
- NXP Semiconductors · 5 open roles · median 44 d
How we counted: 98 open Infrastructure/Platform Software (AI ML Hardware) roles from 29 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 16 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 — it is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.