$155,400 - $233,200 USD yearly
Originally posted September 17, 2026 by the employer.
About the role
Qualcomm’s Data Center AI Architecture team defines cloud AI system-on-chip (SoC) architectures and systems for generative AI inference workloads. The role focuses on SoC, memory, and system architecture for AI accelerators and complete data center systems.
What you'll do
- Partner across architecture, design, systems, product, software, platform, and customer teams to define data center systems.
- Translate product and workload requirements into SoC and system specifications, driving feature-set requirements into technology, IP, platform, and software teams.
- Execute SoC and system architecture studies, product definition, and implementation guidance by quantifying performance, power, area, cost, capacity, memory bandwidth, network topology, and scalability tradeoffs.
- Follow designs through implementation and production, correlate observed system performance with models and targets, identify root causes of gaps, and drive performance closure.
- Execute competitive analysis across SoC, platform, system, compute, memory, data center networking, software, and deployment considerations.
- Support and mentor technical contributors while generating innovations and patents.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or related field with 4+ years of Systems Engineering experience (or Master's degree with 3+ years, or PhD with 2+ years).
- 2+ years of experience in one or more system architecture technology areas and products, such as Power System, Shared Resource Management, Limits/Thermal Management, or Hardware Islands.
Nice to have
- MS or PhD in EE, ECE, CE, CS, or a related field with 7 years of relevant experience in SoC, platform, or system architecture, AI accelerators, memory architecture, or memory technologies.
- Computer and system architecture expertise spanning processors, accelerators, memory systems, data center network fabrics, interconnects, hardware/software interfaces, platform topology, and SoC and system implementation tradeoffs.
- Experience executing quantitative SoC, system, and competitive studies using high-level calculators, spreadsheets, analytical models, profilers, and functional or performance simulators.
- Understanding of generative AI and machine-learning workloads, especially Large Language Model inference and accelerator bottlenecks.
- Experience in processor, accelerator, or system architecture, including ISA design, microarchitecture, performance modeling, system topology, scale-up or scale-out networks, or hardware/software co-design.
- Knowledge of DRAM and memory-controller architecture, bandwidth, latency, and power tradeoffs, protocols such as LPDDR, HBM, DDR, or GDDR, and emerging technologies such as processing-in-memory, processing-near-memory, or 3D integration.
- Expertise in data center SoC or system technologies such as RAS, ECC, security, encryption, Ethernet or InfiniBand networking, RDMA, network interface controllers, switches, congestion control, chip-to-chip or die-to-die protocols, chiplets, PHYs, power and thermals, advanced packaging, or platform management.
- Programming ability for architecture modeling and automation using C++ and Python.
Skills: SoC architecture, AI accelerator, data center, microarchitecture, interconnects
More semiconductor jobs: Qualcomm jobs · SoC design jobs · San Diego jobs
First seen in our index 57 days ago, well below the 72-day median for SoC/Chip Architecture roles.
SoC/Chip Architecture · SOC Architecture
|
Open roles in category
520
|
Median days since first seen
72 d
|
Category median salary (all employers)
$228k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (520 roles · 70 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 94 | 520 |
| Open roles in the wider Digital Design & Verification family | 454 | 3639 · 122 employers |
| Median days since first seen | 66 d | 72 d (+6 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | n/a | $228k |
Skills observed across this category: SoC architecture, AI accelerator, data center, microarchitecture, interconnects
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm (this employer) · 92 open roles · median 73 d
- NVIDIA · 69 open roles · median 86 d
- AMD · 41 open roles · median 72 d
- Apple · 40 open roles · median 14 d
- Arm Holdings · 28 open roles · median 17 d
- Micron Technology · 21 open roles · median 113 d
How we counted: 520 open SoC/Chip Architecture (SOC Architecture) roles from 70 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 14 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 Digital Design & Verification family row. Days are counted from when our index first saw each posting, not from the employer's original posting date.