System Performance Engineer, Senior
$129,500 - $194,300 USD yearly
Optimize and validate power, performance, and thermal behavior across Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets.
Originally posted 3 November 2026 by the employer.
About the role
Qualcomm's System Performance Team is seeking a System Performance Engineer, Senior, to optimize and validate power, performance, and thermal behavior across Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets. The role involves collaborating with software, hardware, and architecture teams to analyze complex concurrent use-cases and provide technical direction across multiple projects.
What you'll do
- Enable, profile, and analyze complex concurrent system use-cases across emulation and software environments (Android, Linux, Windows).
- Define and document performance and power analysis plans for system use-cases across multiple workloads including CPU, GPU, and AI/ML.
- Identify areas of performance optimization in the SoC for both software and hardware architectures.
- Direct triage of complex performance issues to determine root cause and present results to internal and external stakeholders.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to implement optimal power, performance, and thermal solutions.
- Define and develop automation for performance testing and analysis efficiency.
What you'll need
- Experience in system-level software, hardware, and architecture research, simulation, or validation.
- Background in profiling and analyzing performance across emulation environments and operating systems such as Android, Linux, or Windows.
- Expertise defining performance and power analysis plans across CPU, GPU, and AI/ML workloads.
- Technical leadership experience diagnosing and triaging root-cause performance bottlenecks in complex SoCs.
Nice to have
- Master’s degree in Computer Engineering.
- 4 years of practical post-silicon experience in power and performance analysis of complex SoCs.
- Programming and scripting skills in Python, C, and C++.
- Understanding of memory hierarchy, system interconnects, and ARM SoC architecture specifications including SMMU, GIC, Coresight-PMU, and bus interface protocols.
- Knowledge and experience with ARM v8 and v9 specifications.
- Experience with graphics and compute APIs such as Vulkan, OpenGL, DX12, or CUDA.
- Familiarity with AI and LLM workloads, industry power and performance benchmarks, and software power management stacks or scheduler behavior.
Skills: SoC, performance analysis, ARM, power optimization, interconnect
More semiconductor jobs: Qualcomm jobs · SoC design jobs · San Diego jobs
This role has been open 0 days — well below the 76-day median for SoC/Chip Architecture roles.
SoC/Chip Architecture · SOC Architecture
|
Open roles in category
490
|
Median days open
76 d
|
Category median salary (all employers)
$230k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (490 roles · 67 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 79 | 490 |
| Open roles in the wider Digital Design & Verification family | 396 | 3468 · 120 employers |
| Median days open | 89 d | 76 d (+13 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $230k |
Skills observed across this category: SoC, performance analysis, ARM, power optimization, interconnect
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm (this employer) · 78 open roles · median 89 d
- NVIDIA · 62 open roles · median 77 d
- Apple · 52 open roles · median 26 d
- AMD · 37 open roles · median 70 d
- Arm Holdings · 28 open roles · median 7 d
- Micron Technology · 21 open roles · median 111 d
How we counted: 490 open SoC/Chip Architecture (SOC Architecture) roles from 67 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 4 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 — it is counted in the wider Digital Design & Verification family row. Figures refresh nightly.