Company
Qualcomm Incorporated
Job Area
Engineering Group, Engineering Group > Software Engineering
General Summary
We're hiring a seasoned engineering leader to run software development for our enterprise AI organization. You'll lead a global team building full‑stack AI solutions on top of our enterprise AI platform—everything from production-grade chatbots, MCP servers, and workflow engines to agentic AI and automations that drive measurable business outcomes. This role owns global software delivery end‑to‑end: portfolio planning, architecture, execution, quality, and operations at scale. You'll partner closely across product, data, security, infra/cloud, and business teams to deliver secure, reliable, and compliant AI products used across the enterprise.
You combine deep engineering leadership with hands-on technical judgment across Python, Rust, TypeScript, React/React Native, and modern cloud-native delivery (Docker, Kubernetes). You're comfortable running multiple concurrent projects, guiding frameworks and patterns, raising the engineering bar, and creating clarity in a fast-moving, multi-stakeholder environment.
This role requires full-time onsite work in San Diego, CA (5 days per week).
Key Responsibilities
- Own global software delivery for our AI solutions portfolio—roadmaps, release plans, staffing, budgets, quality, and operational readiness across regions and time zones.
- Lead and grow a high-performing, global engineering team (managers and ICs); set standards for design, coding, testing, security, and documentation; cultivate a culture of ownership, inclusion, and continuous improvement.
- Deliver enterprise-grade AI applications: chatbots and virtual assistants, MCP servers, workflow/decision engines, and agentic automations for complex business processes.
- Drive architecture and technical strategy for full-stack solutions (web and mobile) and platform integrations (APIs, events, data, identity, observability).
- Scale with cloud-native practices: containerized services (Docker) orchestrated via Kubernetes; enforce IaC, GitOps, CI/CD, blue/green and canary strategies, and progressive delivery.
- Ensure data excellence across SQL/NoSQL/Search (incl. Elasticsearch): schema design, indexing, performance, backup/restore, governance, and cost management.
- Operationalize AI systems: define SLOs/SLAs, telemetry/observability (logs, metrics, traces), incident management, on-call rotations, and post-incident learning.
- Champion security and compliance by design: least-privilege access, secrets management, policy controls, PII handling, auditability, and adherence to enterprise standards.
- Manage a multi-project portfolio: intake & prioritization, cross-team dependencies, risk mitigation, change management, and executive stakeholder communication.
- Standardize frameworks & patterns for LLM orchestration, agentic workflows, retrieval/search, prompt and memory management, and evaluation/guardrails.
- Partner cross-functionally with Product, Data Science/ML, Platform/SRE, Security, and Business stakeholders to translate objectives into shippable, high-impact solutions.
- Measure what matters: establish OKRs and engineering KPIs (quality, reliability, velocity, cost); use data to guide decisions and continually raise the bar.
- Vendor and ecosystem management: evaluate tools and frameworks, negotiate licenses, manage partners, and ensure interoperability within the enterprise stack.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering or related field (Computer Science, Electrical/Computer Engineering, or equivalent).
- 15+ years of software engineering experience with progressive leadership responsibility.
- Approx. 10 years relevant leadership experience leading software engineering teams delivering enterprise products/platforms.
- Demonstrated success running global teams and delivering multiple concurrent projects in a complex enterprise environment.
- Strong technical depth in: Python, Rust, TypeScript; React and React Native for web/mobile; Cloud-Native (Docker, Kubernetes); CI/CD and environment promotion strategies; SQL and NoSQL; Elasticsearch.
- Experience delivering enterprise AI solutions: production-grade chatbots, MCP servers, workflow engines, and agentic AI/automations.
- Architecture and systems design expertise for distributed, event-driven, and API-first systems with reliability and security postures.
- Operational excellence: observability, SRE, incident management, and performance/cost optimization.
- Experience with agentic frameworks (e.g., Semantic Kernel, LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen) and integrating enterprise tools via MCP.
- Exceptional communication and stakeholder management; ability to align executives and cross-functional partners.
Preferred Qualifications
- Advanced degree (MS/PhD) in a relevant engineering discipline.
- LLM/AI ecosystem expertise: orchestration frameworks (LangChain, Semantic Kernel), RAG/search patterns, evaluation/guardrails, vector indexing; agentic patterns at scale.
- Mobile at scale: React Native architecture, release pipelines, app store operations, and mobile observability.
- DevSecOps & SRE tooling: IaC (Terraform/Helm), GitOps (ArgoCD/Flux), OpenTelemetry, Prometheus/Grafana, feature flags, canary/AB testing.
- Data & streaming: Kafka or equivalent, CDC, event sourcing, data contracts; experience with feature stores and ML metadata systems a plus.
- MLOps familiarity: model registries, inference gateways, evaluation pipelines, and performance monitoring.
- Identity & security: SSO, OAuth2/OIDC, RBAC/ABAC, secrets/KMS; compliance (SOX, HIPAA, GDPR) in enterprise settings.
- Portfolio/program management: intake, prioritization, OKRs, reporting for multi-team initiatives.
- Cloud expertise (Azure/AWS/GCP) with cost governance and multi-environment strategies.
- Certifications: CKA/CKAD, major cloud certs, or security certs (e.g., CISSP).
Minimum Qualifications
Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 8+ years of Software Engineering or related work experience; or Master's degree with 7+ years; or PhD with 6+ years. 4+ years of work experience with programming languages such as C, C++, Java, Python, etc.
Preferred Qualifications (additional)
Master's Degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science or related field; 15+ years of software engineering experience; 4+ years of supervisory experience; 4+ years with Database Management Software and API experience; 3+ years interacting with executive leadership; 3+ years working with operating budgets/project financials.
Principal Duties and Responsibilities
Leverages expert software knowledge to drive design, development, and validation of embedded and cloud software and applications; analyzes user needs and constraints; directs resolution of technical issues; sets guidelines for design, coding, and testing; conducts code reviews and ensures quality; collaborates with other functions to plan end-to-end functionality; sets strategic direction and long-term goals; writes technical documentation.
Level of Responsibility
Provides supervision to direct reports; critical decision-making; strong communication and negotiation; budgets, schedules, and performance standards; influence over key organizational decisions; planning and prioritization.
Qualcomm is an equal opportunity employer. If you are an individual with a disability and need an accommodation during the application/hiring process, Qualcomm is committed to providing an accessible process. You may email ...@qualcomm.com or call Qualcomm's toll-free number found here. Qualcomm will provide reasonable accommodations upon request.
EEO Employer: Qualcomm is an equal opportunity employer; all qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, Veteran status, or any other protected classification.
Pay range: $207,600.00 - $311,400.00. The pay range reflects the broad minimum to maximum for the job code/location. Salary is one component of total compensation, which includes bonuses and RSU grants. Benefits information available on request.