System Performance Engineer, Senior Staff
$179,000 - $268,400 USD yearly
Originally posted 23 July 2026 by the employer.
About the role
Qualcomm's System Performance Team optimizes and validates power, performance, and thermal behavior across software, hardware, and architecture for Qualcomm Snapdragon Chipsets. In this role, you will research, simulate, and validate system-level performance across business units including Mobile, Compute, Automotive, IoT, Server, and Data Center AI.
What you'll do
- Enable, profile, and analyze complex concurrent system use-cases across emulation and software environments including Android, Linux, and Windows. - Define and document performance and power analysis plans for CPU, GPU, and AI/ML workloads, as well as concurrent scenarios. - Identify areas of performance optimization across the SoC for software and hardware architectures. - Direct root-cause triage of complex performance issues and present results to internal and external stakeholders. - Collaborate across hardware, software, and product management teams to implement optimal power, performance, and thermal solutions. - Provide technical leadership and mentoring to engineers across multiple programs, while developing automation tools to improve team efficiency.
What you'll need
- Practical post-silicon experience analyzing the power and performance of complex SoCs. - Experience profiling and analyzing system use-cases in software environments such as Android, Linux, or Windows and emulation environments. - Hands-on experience developing power and performance analysis plans for CPU, GPU, and AI/ML workloads. - Technical leadership experience guiding engineering teams and triaging complex system-level performance issues.
Nice to have
- Master’s degree in Computer Engineering. - 10 years of practical post-silicon experience of power and performance analysis of complex SoCs. - 3 years of work experience in a role requiring interaction with senior leadership (Sr. Director, Vice President level and above). - Programming and scripting skills in Python and C/C++. - Understanding of ARM SoC concepts and architecture specifications such as SMMU, GIC, Coresight-PMU, ARM v8, and ARM v9 specifications. - Experience with graphics and compute APIs such as Vulkan, OpenGL, DX12, or CUDA. - Understanding of memory hierarchy, system interconnects, SW power management stacks, and scheduler behavior.
Skills: Snapdragon Chipsets, power, performance, thermal, AI/ML workloads, SoC, ARM SoC
This role has been open 87 days — slightly above the 78-day median for SoC/Chip Architecture roles.
SoC/Chip Architecture · SOC Architecture
|
Open roles in category
472
|
Median days open
78 d
|
Median salary
$238k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (472 roles · 65 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 73 | 472 |
| Open roles in the wider Digital Design & Verification family | 392 | 3224 · 116 employers |
| Median days open | 89 d | 78 d (+11 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $238k |
Skills observed across this category: Snapdragon Chipsets, power, performance, thermal, AI/ML workloads, SoC, ARM SoC
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm (this employer) · 73 open roles · median 89 d
- NVIDIA · 56 open roles · median 70 d
- Apple · 36 open roles · median 13 d
- AMD · 34 open roles · median 61 d
- Arm Holdings · 27 open roles · median 116 d
- Micron Technology · 22 open roles · median 108 d
How we counted: 472 open SoC/Chip Architecture (SOC Architecture) roles from 65 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 19 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 Digital Design & Verification family row. Figures refresh nightly.