Sr. Staff CPU Software Test Engineer
$180,600 - $271,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 7 July 2026 by the employer.
About the role
Qualcomm is seeking a Sr. Staff CPU Software Test Engineer to design, develop, and validate embedded and cloud edge software and firmware across mobile, compute, and automotive environments. The role focuses on verifying quality and compliance at functional, integration, and system levels while optimizing operating systems for power and performance.
What you'll do
- Create software/firmware test plans addressing requirements traceability matrix and test coverage with respect to feature requirements. - Design, develop, execute, and maintain automated software/firmware test suites to verify quality and compliance at functional, integration, and system levels. - Manually test customer installation and deployment experiences across mobile, compute, and automotive environments. - Assist in establishing a Quality Engineering/Release engineering process focused on continuous integration and continuous deployment. - Implement customer use-cases, workload analysis models, and workload creation while collaborating with cross-functional teams on bring-up, debug, and diagnostics. - Ensure existing Operating Systems and customer environments run reliably while identifying power and performance enhancements.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 6+ years of Software Engineering experience (or Master's degree and 5+ years, or PhD and 4+ years). - 3+ years of work experience with programming languages such as C, C++, Java, or Python.
Nice to have
- 8 years of experience in Software/Firmware Validation, including at least 5 years focused on Data Center Servers. - Experience developing automated software/firmware test cases for server platforms supporting bring-up and production software releases. - Extensive experience with operating systems such as Ubuntu Server, RHEL, SUSE, or Windows Server. - Prior experience with software/firmware integration at BIOS/UEFI, BMC firmware, and Operating System levels for x86, ARM64, or RISC-V 64bit server platforms. - Strong understanding of server firmware standards, open-source implementations, and specifications for ARM64-based servers.
Skills: software/firmware test plans, automated test suites, Operating Systems, BIOS/UEFI, BMC firmware, server platforms
This role has been open 106 days — well above the 61-day median for Systems Software Engineering roles.
Systems Software Engineering · Systems Software
|
Open roles in category
697
|
Median days open
61 d
|
Median salary
$210k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (697 roles · 73 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 174 | 697 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 728 | 6296 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 79 d | 61 d (+18 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $210k |
Skills observed across this category: software/firmware test plans, automated test suites, Operating Systems, BIOS/UEFI, BMC firmware, server platforms
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm (this employer) · 172 open roles · median 82 d
- NVIDIA · 133 open roles · median 42 d
- AMD · 61 open roles · median 50 d
- Mobileye · 25 open roles · median 76 d
- Broadcom · 23 open roles · median 56 d
- Arm Holdings · 20 open roles · median 118 d
How we counted: 697 open Systems Software Engineering (Systems Software) roles from 73 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 21 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.