PCIe Software Applications Engineer - Software Applications Engineering

Company:

Qualcomm Communication Technologies Ltd.

Job Area:

Engineering Group, Engineering Group > Software Applications Engineering

General Summary:

As a Qualcomm PCIe Platform Customer Engineer, you will provide technical expertise and customer-facing engineering support for the design, integration, validation, optimization, and commercialization of Qualcomm-based 5G, AR/VR, IoT, edge AI, and computing products. You will work closely with OEM/ODM customers and cross-functional teams to resolve complex PCIe, system software, hardware integration, and platform-level issues across Linux, Android, Windows, and UEFI environments.

This role focuses on PCIe feature enablement, platform bring-up, link and PHY validation, performance tuning, interoperability, certification support, stability analysis, and issue resolution throughout the product development and commercialization lifecycle.

This position requires close collaboration with OEM/ODM customers and Qualcomm teams across multiple regions. Flexibility may be required to support customer milestones, cross-region debug activities, issue escalations, and product commercialization schedules.

Responsibilities

Customer Platform Support

• Work directly with OEM/ODM customers on Qualcomm platform design, optimization, integration, testing, validation, and commercialization.

• Provide technical guidance for PCIe and peripheral-interface integration across hardware, firmware, operating-system, and application layers.

• Analyze customer-reported issues, reproduce failures, identify root causes, and provide data-driven recommendations.

• Support platform bring-up, pre-production validation, certification, issue escalation, and commercialization readiness.

• Coordinate issue resolution with global, cross-region, and cross-functional teams across time zones.

PCIe Integration, Validation & Performance

• Support PCIe host/device integration, link bring-up, enumeration, reset, power management, hot-plug, and error-recovery validation.

• Perform PCIe certification, interoperability, compatibility, throughput, latency, and performance characterization.

• Support PCIe PHY tuning, link validation, signal-quality analysis, and electrical compliance activities.

• Analyze the impact of CPU, memory, storage, firmware, power, thermal, and system configurations on PCIe performance.

• Use PCIe protocol analyzers, such as LeCroy or equivalent tools, to analyze transactions, link behavior, protocol errors, and interoperability issues.

Software, Firmware & System Debugging

• Support PCIe driver development, integration, and debugging on Linux, Android, and Windows platforms.

• Analyze behavior across user space, kernel space, firmware, UEFI, bootloader, and platform configuration layers.

• Investigate Linux kernel stability issues, driver failures, system hangs, crashes, link failures, and unexpected PCIe behavior.

• Debug system-level issues using JTAG, GDB, kernel logs, crash dumps, tracing utilities, protocol captures, and hardware measurements.

Platform-Level Issue Resolution

• Collect and correlate logs, traces, protocol captures, performance data, hardware measurements, and test results to isolate root causes.

• Investigate interactions among PCIe, USB, I2C, SPI, UART, memory, storage, power-management ICs, clocks, regulators, and thermal policies.

• Collaborate with software and firmware teams to develop, validate, and deliver patches, workarounds, and customer solutions.

• Prepare technical reports, debug plans, issue summaries, presentations, and commercialization-readiness updates.

• Track issues to closure and communicate status, risks, dependencies, and recommended next steps.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Collaborate with platform, silicon, hardware, BIOS/UEFI, firmware, driver, operating-system, validation, and test teams.

• Contribute to customer enablement materials, technical workshops, validation plans, and cross-region debug activities.

• Quickly learn new technologies and apply structured problem-solving methods during fast-paced product development cycles.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or a related field; Master’s degree is a plus.

• 8+ years of software, embedded systems, platform integration, validation, or customer engineering experience, preferably in the wireless, telecommunications, semiconductor, or computing industry.

• Programming experience in one or more of C, C++, Java, Python, PyTorch, or similar languages; strong C/C++ and embedded programming skills preferred.

• Experience with Linux or Android software development in user space and/or kernel space.

• Experience with system-level debugging using JTAG, GDB, kernel logs, tracing tools, crash analysis utilities, or protocol analyzers.

• Strong analytical, problem-solving, communication, and customer-facing skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities.

Preferred Skills & Technical Experience

• PCIe certification, PCIe PHY tuning, link validation, electrical compliance, or signal-integrity experience.

• PCIe driver development on Linux or Windows; PCIe UEFI driver workflow, initialization, and timer-tuning experience.

• PCIe device, storage, endpoint, switch, or peripheral compatibility and interoperability experience.

• PCIe protocol analysis using LeCroy or an equivalent analyzer; PCIe throughput tuning and system-level performance optimization.

• Linux kernel stability analysis and root-cause debugging; experience with IoT devices such as home speakers, security cameras, or connected peripherals.

• Knowledge of memory, storage, USB, I2C, SPI, UART, power-management ICs, ARM TrustZone, fingerprint solutions, or related platform technologies.

• Experience with Qualcomm platforms, embedded Linux, Android BSPs, UEFI, bootloaders, or cross-region OEM/ODM customer programs.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or a related field and 8+ years of relevant software, embedded systems, platform integration, validation, or customer engineering experience.

• 8+ years of experience with programming or scripting languages such as C, C++, Java, Python, or similar technologies.

• 8+ years of experience with system debugging, driver development, protocol analysis, or performance and stability analysis.

• Ability to work directly with customers and communicate technical issues clearly in written and spoken English

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 6+ years of Software Applications Engineering, Software Development experience, or related work experience.
OR
Master's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 5+ years of Software Applications Engineering, Software Development experience, or related work experience.
OR
PhD in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 4+ years of Software Applications Engineering, Software Development experience, or related work experience.

• 3+ years of experience with Programming Language such as C, C++, Java, Python, etc.
• 3+ years of experience with debugging techniques.

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