Forward Deployment Engineer – Senior - 5G/6G/NTN - US-CA-San Diego-5G, United States
$142,030 - $236,720 USD yearly
Originally posted 8 October 2026 by the employer.
About the role
This senior-level role focuses on embedding with customers to deploy and integrate complex software solutions, acting as a software developer, systems engineer, and deployment lead.
What you'll do
- Lead major deployment engagements, coordinating across Keysight and customer engineering teams.
- Own technically complex deployment issues from first report to validated fix.
- Analyze signaling flows, traces, timing behavior, and performance data to isolate failures across Keysight and customer implementations.
- Write and modify application and protocol-stack software, plus supporting software and firmware.
- Develop and extend Python APIs that customer teams integrate against.
- Create diagnostic instrumentation and develop, validate, and deploy controlled patches, feature flags, and interim releases.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's or Master's degree and 6-7 years of relevant software/systems engineering experience.
- Strong software-development experience across multiple software stacks.
- Expertise in at least one domain (PHY/L1, MAC/RLC/PDCP and L2, or RRC/NAS and L3), plus working knowledge of adjacent layers and end-to-end 4G, 5G, and 5G-Advanced system behavior.
- Proficiency in C/C++ and Python (including API development), Linux, embedded or real-time software, and automated testing.
- Experience debugging protocol interactions through logs, traces, packet captures, call flows, and timing analysis.
- Familiarity with 3GPP specifications and the practical differences among standards compliance, interoperability, and implementation behavior.
- Experience in design and test instrumentation and test emulation tools.
- Ability to produce production-quality code that ships in a customer's build.
- Willingness to relocate or travel to a specific customer site as required by the assignment.
Skills: software developer, systems engineer, protocol stack, 5G/6G, C/C++ and Python
This role has been open 1 day — well below the 45-day median for Software Engineering Semiconductor roles.
Software Engineering Semiconductor · Systems Software
|
Open roles in category
362
|
Median days open
45 d
|
Median salary
$148k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Keysight Technologies | All employers we track in this specialty (362 roles · 57 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 37 | 362 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 152 | 6049 · 146 employers |
| Median days open | 30 d | 45 d (−15 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $148k |
Skills observed across this category: software developer, systems engineer, protocol stack, 5G/6G, C/C++ and Python
Who's hiring in this category
- Keysight Technologies (this employer) · 37 open roles · median 29 d
- KLA Corporation · 30 open roles · median 159 d
- Cadence Design Systems · 29 open roles · median 198 d
- Applied Materials · 27 open roles · median 43 d
- Micron Technology · 26 open roles · median 39 d
- NVIDIA · 25 open roles · median 39 d
How we counted: 362 open Software Engineering Semiconductor (Systems Software) roles from 57 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 9 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.