Principal SW Engineer - LLM Serving (Cloud AI)
$200,800 - $301,200 USD yearly
Originally posted 18 February 2026 by the employer.
About the role
The Qualcomm Cloud AI team is developing software solutions for Inference Acceleration across the product life cycle from early R&D to commercial deployment.
What you'll do
- Deliver commercial software spanning design, compiler technology, performance modeling, and bottleneck analysis. - Plan, manage, and execute software projects across the product life cycle. - Execute, analyze, and optimize neural networks for inference acceleration. - Write high-performance software targeting multicore systems and machine learning accelerators. - Analyze the performance of software and hardware solutions on multi-core architectures, caches, memories, buses, and PCIe.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 8+ years of experience; or Master's degree and 7+ years of experience; or PhD and 6+ years of experience in Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work. - Experience delivering commercial software projects. - Strong development skills in PyTorch, C++, and Python. - Understanding of LLMs, multi-modal, and reasoning models. - Experience executing, analyzing, and optimizing neural networks. - Experience writing high-performance software for multicore systems and analyzing performance on multi-core architectures (core, cache, memory, bus, PCIe).
Nice to have
- Experience in serving frameworks, like vLLM. - Understanding of multi-core processor architecture and SoC architectures (NoCs, caches, memories). - Experience with performance modeling of SoC architectures. - Experience with machine learning accelerators and related software. - Background and understanding of neural network operators and mathematical operations, including linear algebra and math libraries. - Master's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Networks & Systems, or Computer Science.
Skills: LLM serving, inference acceleration, PyTorch, neural networks, multi-core architectures
This role has been open 200 days — well above the 61-day median for Software Engineering Semiconductor roles.
Software Engineering Semiconductor · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
158
|
Median days open
61 d
|
Median salary
$191k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (158 roles · 43 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 21 | 158 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 735 | 6250 · 144 employers |
| Median days open | 200 d | 61 d (+139 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $191k |
Skills observed across this category: LLM serving, inference acceleration, PyTorch, neural networks, multi-core architectures
Who's hiring in this category
- NVIDIA · 26 open roles · median 211 d
- Micron Technology · 25 open roles · median 39 d
- Qualcomm (this employer) · 21 open roles · median 199 d
- Infineon Technologies · 12 open roles · median 44 d
- AMD · 8 open roles · median 61 d
- Applied Materials · 4 open roles · median 95 d
How we counted: 158 open Software Engineering Semiconductor (AI ML Hardware) roles from 43 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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