Company:

Qualcomm International, Inc.

Australia Branch Office:

Job Area:

Engineering Group, Engineering Group > Software Engineering

General Summary:Role Summary

As a Principal Software Engineer, you are a recognized technical authority responsible for defining, architecting, and delivering mission critical robotics software systems across multiple product generations. You operate with minimal direction, solve ambiguous and cross domain problems, and influence technical decisions beyond your immediate team.critical robotics software systems across multiple product generations. You operate with minimal direction, solve ambiguous and crossdomain problems, and influence technical decisions beyond your immediate team.

This role is not focused on people management, but on technical leadership at scale owning end-to-end architecture, setting engineering standards, and unblocking complex system level challenges across hardware, software, and product teams.toend architecture, setting engineering standards, and unblocking complex systemlevel challenges across hardware, software, and product teams.

Scope & Impact

At the Principal level, you are expected to:

• Own system level architecture for major subsystems (e.g., localization, navigation, sensor fusion).level architecture for major subsystems (e.g., localization, navigation,

• Drive cross team technical alignment and influence roadmap decisions.team technical alignment and influence roadmap decisions.

• Anticipate future platform needs (compute, sensing, software abstractions) and design with multiyear durability.

• Be the go to expert for one or more deep technical areas while maintaining strong system breadth.to expert for one or more deep technical areas while maintaining strong system breadth.

Key Responsibilities System Architecture & Product Translation

• Independently translate product and platform requirements into software architecture, technical requirements, and measurable performance targets.

• Define error budgets, latency budgets, and accuracy targets, and ensure they are met across sensing, compute, and execution pipelines.

• Make and defend architectural tradeoffs across cost, performance, power, and robustness, with clear technical rationale.

• Influence platform level decisions that impact multiple teams or product lines. level decisions that impact multiple teams or product lines.

Localization, INS/GNSS, and Sensor Fusion

• Architect and lead development of production grade INS/GNSS and multisensory fusion systems for robotics use cases such as indoor mapping, outdoor navigation, and humanoid locomotion.grade INS/GNSS and multisensor fusion systems for robotics use cases such as indoor mapping, outdoor navigation, and humanoid locomotion.

• Select and justify sensor fusion approaches (EKF/UKF, factor graphs, hybrid methods) based on performance, stability, and compute constraints.

• Evaluate IMU and GNSS solutions (MEMS vs. highergrade IMUs, RTK vs. PPP) and guide systemlevel integration decisions.

• Design for realworld failure modes including multipath, GNSS outages, time sync issues, and sensor drift, with robust recovery strategies.

Optimization, Estimation, and Real Time Control

• Own the design of realtime optimization and estimation components used in motion planning, control, or locomotion.

• Select and adapt optimization techniques (QP, MPC, trajectory optimization) for embedded, realtime execution.

• Drive solverlevel optimizations such as warmstarting, sparsity exploitation, approximation, and numerical stabilization.

• Ensure deterministic behavior under tight latency and memory budgets on heterogeneous compute platforms.

Embedded Software Engineering Excellence

• Set the technical bar for highreliability embedded software in C/C++.

• Design and review software architectures for modularity, testability, and longterm maintainability.

• Lead complex debugging efforts involving timing jitter, race conditions, memory corruption, or intermittent hardware faults.

• Establish best practices for testing, diagnostics, fault handling, and system observability.

Technical Leadership & Influence

• Act as a technical mentor to Senior and Staff engineers through design reviews, architecture discussions, and problem solving.

• Lead technical reviews for highrisk or highimpact features.

• Proactively identify technical risks and drive mitigation strategies before they impact delivery.

• Represent the team in crossfunctional and crossorganizational technical forums.

Required Qualifications (Principal Level)

• 15+ years of professional software engineering experience, with deep expertise in embedded systems, robotics, or realtime software.

• Demonstrated ownership of large, complex systems from architecture through production deployment.

• Expert proficiency in C/C++, with strong command of concurrency, memory management, and realtime constraints.

• Proven experience designing sensor fusion, localization, navigation, or control systems used in real products.

• Strong applied background in estimation, optimization, or control theory.

Preferred Qualifications

• Handson experience with GNSS, RTK, PPP, IMUbased navigation, or similar localization technologies.

• Experience deploying algorithms on resourceconstrained or heterogeneous compute platforms (CPU/DSP/NPU).

• Familiarity with robotics middleware and system integration (e.g., ROS2based stacks).

• Experience with safetycritical or highreliability systems (robotics, automotive, aerospace).

• Track record of influencing architecture across multiple teams or product areas

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 in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 7+ years of Software Engineering or related work experience.
  OR
  PhD in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 6+ years of Software Engineering or related work experience.

• 4+ years of work experience with Programming Language such as C, C++, Java, Python, etc.

Applicants: Qualcomm is an equal opportunity employer. If you are an individual with a disability and need an accommodation during the application/hiring process, rest assured that Qualcomm is committed to providing an accessible process. You may e-mail disability-accomodations@qualcomm.com or call Qualcomm's toll-free number found here. Upon request, Qualcomm will provide reasonable accommodations to support individuals with disabilities to be able participate in the hiring process. Qualcomm is also committed to making our workplace accessible for individuals with disabilities. (Keep in mind that this email address is used to provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities. We will not respond here to requests for updates on applications or resume inquiries).

Qualcomm expects its employees to abide by all applicable policies and procedures, including but not limited to security and other requirements regarding protection of Company confidential information and other confidential and/or proprietary information, to the extent those requirements are permissible under applicable law.

To all Staffing and Recruiting Agencies: Our Careers Site is only for individuals seeking a job at Qualcomm. Staffing and recruiting agencies and individuals being represented by an agency are not authorized to use this site or to submit profiles, applications or resumes, and any such submissions will be considered unsolicited. Qualcomm does not accept unsolicited resumes or applications from agencies. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias, Qualcomm employees or any other company location. Qualcomm is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes/applications.

If you would like more information about this role, please contact Qualcomm Careers.