$114,500 - $171,700 USD yearly
Originally posted 18 September 2026 by the employer — open 1 day.
About the role
This role involves designing, developing, and optimizing real-time embedded software for Qualcomm's modem subsystem (MPSS).
What you'll do
- Design, implement, and optimize real-time embedded modem software across protocol layers, drivers, and platform services.
- Apply data-structure and algorithm design to build efficient, scalable firmware components.
- Own end-to-end feature delivery: requirements, architecture, implementation, unit/integration testing, on-target bring-up, and maintenance.
- Pioneer AI-native development practices within the team, integrating AI coding agents and establishing prompt patterns.
- Build and maintain AI-assisted tooling for code review, static analysis, test synthesis, and automated crash/log triage.
- Debug and root-cause complex, multi-layer issues on target hardware, leveraging AI-assisted analysis of logs, traces, and RAM dumps.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
- Strong command of data structures and algorithms with ability to reason about time/space complexity.
- Deep understanding of operating systems concepts: scheduling, concurrency, interrupts, memory management, IPC, real-time constraints, and RTOS internals.
- Proven programming proficiency in modern C/C++ (C++17 and beyond), including performance optimization and lock-free/thread-safe patterns.
- Experience with embedded software on DSP and Arm architectures, including familiarity with SIMD/vectorization, DMA, and low-power design.
- Experience with debugging on target hardware: JTAG, logic analyzers, protocol analyzers, crash-dump / RAM-dump analysis, and log parsing.
- AI-first mindset, treating AI tooling as a core engineering multiplier.
- Experience using AI coding assistants and agentic tools to generate, refactor, and review embedded C/C++.
- Ability to build and maintain AI-augmented developer workflows: prompt libraries, agent rules, and retrieval-augmented context.
- Experience applying LLMs to crash triage, log summarization, root-cause analysis, and automated defect classification.
Nice to have
- Experience with device drivers, HAL layers, boot flows, and hardware/software co-design.
- Interest in AI-assisted test generation and verification, including synthesizing unit/integration tests and fuzzing harnesses.
- Comfort evaluating AI output critically, validating generated code against timing/memory budgets, and enforcing safety and correctness.
- Experience fine-tuning, prompt-engineering, or building tooling around code models; familiarity with embedding/vector search over source repositories.
Skills: real-time embedded modem software, DSP and Arm architectures, RTOS internals, AI-native development, modem subsystem
This role has been open 0 days — well below the 58-day median for Embedded Firmware Engineering roles.
Embedded Firmware Engineering · Systems Software
|
Open roles in category
719
|
Median days open
58 d
|
Median salary
$174k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (719 roles · 75 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 124 | 719 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 722 | 5796 · 143 employers |
| Median days open | 59 d | 58 d (+1 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $174k |
Skills observed across this category: real-time embedded modem software, DSP and Arm architectures, RTOS internals, AI-native development, modem subsystem
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm (this employer) · 122 open roles · median 60 d
- Micron Technology · 62 open roles · median 66 d
- NVIDIA · 59 open roles · median 43 d
- AMD · 49 open roles · median 29 d
- Lattice Semiconductor · 47 open roles · median 11 d
- NXP Semiconductors · 33 open roles · median 59 d
How we counted: 719 open Embedded Firmware Engineering (Systems Software) roles from 75 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 19 Sept 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.