$197,000 - $295,400 USD yearly
Leading platform and PCB architecture strategy across Qualcomm's personal compute chipset portfolio.
Originally posted 25 August 2026 by the employer.
About the role
Qualcomm is seeking a Principal Chipset Project Engineer to define PCB and hardware platform architecture across the personal compute product portfolio. The role leads platform and PCB strategy, driving cost, area, power, and performance targets across the main SOC, PMIC, and connectivity subsystems.
What you'll do
- Lead early PCB architectural trade-off decisions, evaluating solution options and articulating cost, power, performance, and risk implications.
- Set, execute, and own targets for PCB cost, area, and bill of materials while maintaining power and system performance.
- Drive PCB competitiveness across platforms, including layer count minimization, stack-up trade-offs, board area routing efficiency, and platform reuse across SKUs and generations.
- Partner across chipset systems and architecture, product management, packaging, platform hardware, SI/PI, validation, test, software, and customer engineering.
- Engage with vendors, OEMs, and ODMs to align on early platform and PCB architecture to enable manufacturable, cost-effective designs.
- Establish best practices and execution playbooks for cost-driven platform and PCB architecture to support scalable execution.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field with 8+ years of Systems Engineering or related experience (or Master's with 7+ years, or PhD with 6+ years).
- Experience leading hardware systems engineering and platform-level architectural decisions.
- Technical background in PCB and platform cost, power, and performance optimization.
Nice to have
- 12 years of experience in hardware platform architecture and PCB design with a focus on the personal computer (PC) segment.
- Strong knowledge of power delivery networks (PDN), signal integrity (SI), and power integrity (PI), and how these constraints drive PCB architecture, stack-up, and layout decisions.
- Understanding of PCB architecture fundamentals, including layer drivers, stack-up trade-offs, routing density, and cost impacts.
- Knowledge of PCB design tools and experience reviewing layouts in partnership with hardware design and layout leads.
- Experience with OEM enablement of optimal PCB solutions and familiarity with IC, package, and PCB design practices and trade-offs.
- Master's degree in Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering.
More semiconductor jobs: Qualcomm jobs · Hardware design jobs · San Diego jobs
First seen in our index 79 days ago, well above the 44-day median for Hardware Systems Engineering roles.
Hardware Systems Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
1157
|
Median days since first seen
44 d
|
Category median salary (all employers)
$148k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (1157 roles · 108 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 54 | 1157 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 729 | 6672 · 159 employers |
| Median days since first seen | 45 d | 44 d (−1 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | n/a | $148k |
Who's hiring in this category
- Intel Corporation · 93 open roles · median 34 d
- KLA Corporation · 66 open roles · median 62 d
- Applied Materials · 65 open roles · median 36 d
- NVIDIA · 62 open roles · median 75 d
- ASML · 58 open roles · median 21 d
- Teradyne · 58 open roles · median 53 d
How we counted: 1157 open Hardware Systems Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 108 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 12 Nov 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there, and is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Days are counted from when our index first saw each posting, not from the employer's original posting date.