Sr. Staff Engineer - SoC Safety Architect

Job Title

Sr. Staff Engineer - SoC Safety Architect

Role Summary

Design and deliver SoC-wide architecture platforms and safety solutions across Qualcomm's SoC portfolio. Work cross-functionally with hardware, software, product, and verification teams to define system-level requirements, prototype solutions, and justify architectural directions using workload analysis and quantitative measurement.

Experience Level

Senior-level. See Education Requirements for degree and years-of-experience guidance.

Responsibilities

Key responsibilities include:

• Define and prototype SoC architecture solutions across power, memory, coherency, virtualization, debug, and safety domains.
• Perform workload analysis, algorithm optimization, and power/performance characterization to inform architectural tradeoffs.
• Develop and run simulators, profilers, and hardware experiments to generate quantitative evidence for design decisions.
• Collaborate with subsystem architects, hardware designers, software teams, and product managers to integrate solutions across IP blocks.
• Analyze failure modes and safety implications of subsystem interactions, and recommend mitigations to HW/SW design teams.
• Create system- and SOC-level safety concepts, requirements decomposition, and safety work products for safety-critical applications.
• Communicate results and safety recommendations to internal teams and external customers or partners.

Requirements

Must-have and desirable skills and experience.

• Minimum: 2+ years of experience in one or more system architecture technology areas or products (e.g., power systems, resource management, thermal/limits management, hardware islands).
• Systems engineering experience in SOC architecture, including familiarity with CPU, GPU, AI accelerators, display, camera preprocessors, DDR controllers, NOC, SMMU and I/O blocks.
• Ability to analyze subsystem failure modes and map safety use cases to heterogeneous compute subsystems.
• Familiarity with one or more ISAs (ARM, RISC-V, x86, MIPS) and understanding of how ISA and microarchitecture choices affect safety and isolation.
• Experience developing system-level safety concepts, safety requirements, and safety artefacts (e.g., SEooC products) for complex SOCs.
• Strong cross-team communication skills to represent safety architecture to OEMs, Tier-1s, and internal stakeholders.

Nice-to-have:

• Hands-on experience applying ISO 26262 or IEC 61508 to SoCs for automotive or industrial safety.
• Experience with formal safety analysis techniques (FMEA, FTA, FMEDA) and safety manuals or audit processes.
• Prior exposure to SOC RTL design, verification, post-silicon validation, or Safety OS/AUTOSAR environments.
• Familiarity with requirements tools (JAMA, Codebeamer, DOORS) and working with 3rd-party safety assessors.

Education Requirements

One of the following is required: Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or related field with 6+ years of systems engineering or related experience; OR Master's in EE/CS or related with 5+ years' experience; OR PhD in EE/CS or related with 4+ years' experience. The posting separately requires at least 2+ years of experience in one or more system architecture technology areas or products.

About the Company

Company: Qualcomm

Headquarters: San Diego, California, United States

Qualcomm is a global leader in semiconductor and telecommunications equipment, specializing in mobile technologies and innovations. Known for its Adreno GPUs, the company provides solutions enabling advancements in mobile gaming, AI, VR/AR, and autonomous driving. Qualcomm's cutting-edge technology and commitment to high-performance, power-efficient designs drive the evolution of mobile graphics and connectivity worldwide.