Firmware Development Principal Engineer - Santa Clara, California, United States of America
$211,800 - $317,800 USD yearly
Originally posted 30 March 2026 by the employer.
About the role
As a CPU Performance Management FW Developer, you are responsible for working with a team on the enablement of the power management solution for Qualcomm's custom CPUs. You will collaborate internally to define standard driven solutions and implement embedded firmware to manage performance across CPU subsystems.
What you'll do
- Drive firmware design, implementation, and verification across pre-silicon and post-silicon environments. - Assist in defining CPU performance management solutions for future generations of custom CPUs. - Collaborate with hardware power management and firmware development teams to characterize and tune solutions for SoCs. - Actively engage with open source communities to contribute support for processor architectures, device drivers, and firmware features. - Collaborate with cross-functional teams on platform bring-up, debug, diagnostics, and firmware lifecycle.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or related field with 8+ years of software engineering experience (or Master's with 7+ years, or PhD with 6+ years). - 4+ years of work experience with programming languages such as C, C++, Java, or Python. - Experience with embedded firmware design, implementation, and verification in pre-silicon or post-silicon environments.
Nice to have
- BS/BEng in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or Computer Science with 5 years' experience in embedded firmware development. - Proficiency writing and debugging C and assembly. - Driver development experience in RTOS or OS kernel environments. - Development experience with embedded OSes such as Zephyr, eCos, uC/OS, or FreeRTOS. - Experience developing for pre-silicon environments including simulators and FPGA emulation. - Experience developing, characterizing, and tuning performance management solutions for SoC subsystems. - Familiarity with ARM v8 architecture or development experience on an ARMv8 platform.
Skills: CPU Performance Management FW Developer, power management solution, embedded firmware, pre-silicon, post-silicon, device drivers
This role has been open 200 days — well above the 107-day median for Embedded Firmware Engineering roles.
Embedded Firmware Engineering · Automotive IC
|
Open roles in category
69
|
Median days open
107 d
|
Median salary
$159k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (69 roles · 16 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 17 | 69 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 735 | 6250 · 144 employers |
| Median days open | 200 d | 107 d (+93 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $159k |
Skills observed across this category: CPU Performance Management FW Developer, power management solution, embedded firmware, pre-silicon, post-silicon, device drivers
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm (this employer) · 17 open roles · median 199 d
- Infineon Technologies · 11 open roles · median 95 d
- NVIDIA · 10 open roles · median 70 d
- NXP Semiconductors · 7 open roles · median 107 d
- Renesas Electronics · 5 open roles · median 45 d
- Arrow Electronics · 4 open roles · median 120 d
How we counted: 69 open Embedded Firmware Engineering (Automotive IC) roles from 16 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 25 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.
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