Company:

Qualcomm Canada ULC:

Job Area:

Engineering Group, Engineering Group > Machine Learning Engineering

General Summary:

Job Summary:

The Principal Engineer, Verification (CI/CD & Embedded HW) is a senior individual contributor responsible for designing, scaling, and hardening CI/CD infrastructure and verification systems that validate Qualcomm’s AI Software stack—including QNN HTP, QAIRT, toolchains, kernels, and embedded runtime components. This role is deeply technical and hands‑on: you will build large‑scale automated pipelines, integrate embedded hardware (DSP, NPU) test execution, drive target‑based regression infrastructure, and ensure efficient, reliable, and high‑signal validation at scale.

Key Responsibilities (IC‑Focused):

CI/CD Infrastructure Architecture & Scaling

• Architect and scale large‑distributed CI/CD systems with high throughput and low flakiness.
• Design automated workflows: build, package, deploy, flash, run, log‑collection, triage, dashboarding.
• Develop scheduling/orchestration layers for thousands of HW‑based regression tests.
• Implement monitoring, telemetry, and automated mitigation for CI stability.

Embedded Hardware Validation & Automation

• Develop embedded target test frameworks across DSP/NPU.
• Automate flashing, provisioning, power/reset, and new chipset bring‑up.
• Design hardware‑in‑loop validation for stability, thermal, long‑run correctness, and performance.

Test Strategy, Coverage Expansion & Signal Improvement

• Own coverage strategy for throughput, correctness, memory behavior, and runtime scheduling.
• Develop automated triage signals and failure classification systems.
• Eliminate flakiness and nondeterminism in HW test environments.

Open‑Source & Internal Pipeline Ownership

• Maintain CI/verification pipelines for internal and open‑source projects.
• Enforce PR gating, reproducible builds, artifact management, and API correctness.

Cross‑Functional Influence

• Influence DevOps, firmware, and platform teams using data‑driven insights.
• Lead technical deep‑dives on CI and embedded HW failures.
• Align infrastructure capabilities with program milestones and customer requirements.

Documentation & Process Engineering

• Produce high‑quality documentation for CI architecture, HW frameworks, and best practices.
• Drive continuous improvement and streamline reproducible HW testing workflows.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years in CI/CD engineering, verification, embedded systems, or runtime/toolchain development.
• Expertise designing/scaling CI/CD (Buildkite, Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions).
• Deep experience integrating embedded hardware into automated pipelines.
• Background in firmware flashing, device provisioning, power/reset automation, and board‑farm debugging.
• Strong scripting/programming in Python, Bash, C/C++.
• Experience maintaining open‑source verification pipelines.
• Strong debugging across runtime/driver/inference layers.
• Ability to influence cross‑functional engineering teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with Qualcomm AI stack (QNN, QAIRT, SNPE).
• Experience with heterogeneous compute validation (DSP/GPU/CPU/NPU).
• Background in silicon bring‑up or hardware‑in‑loop systems.
• Experience with large device‑farm operation and automation.

Success Indicators

• Highly stable, scalable CI/CD pipelines with reduced failures/flakiness.
• Faster regression turnaround and increased throughput.
• Strong embedded target coverage with reproducible signals.
• Positive feedback from global engineering teams.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 8+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience. OR
  Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 7+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience.
  OR
  PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 6+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience.

New Headcount

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