Experience: 4–10 years
Location: San Diego, CA

Job Summary

Qualcomm is seeking a highly skilled Staff Engineer with strong experience in CPU design, RTL development, and/or Physical Design (PD) to work on next-generation high-performance, low-power SoCs and CPU architectures.

The ideal candidate will have hands-on experience in ASIC/SoC development, strong understanding of CPU microarchitecture and digital design, and the ability to work across RTL, synthesis, physical implementation, timing, power, and area optimization. The engineer will collaborate closely with Architecture, RTL, Design Verification, Physical Design, DFT, CAD, Power, and Post-Silicon teams.

Key Responsibilities

Design and optimize high-performance CPU/SoC blocks from microarchitecture through RTL and physical implementation.
Develop, review, and refine Verilog/SystemVerilog RTL.
Participate in microarchitecture definition and design trade-offs targeting Power, Performance, and Area (PPA).
Work closely with Physical Design teams on synthesis, floorplanning, placement, CTS, routing, timing closure, and signoff.
Analyze and resolve timing, congestion, power, area, and design-closure issues.
Support RTL-to-GDS implementation and identify RTL changes required for physical convergence.
Perform or support STA/MMMC analysis, constraint development, and timing optimization.
Collaborate with verification teams on functional verification, coverage, debugging, and design quality.
Work with DFT, CAD, and implementation teams to resolve complex design issues.
Develop automation and productivity solutions using Python, Tcl, Perl, or Shell.
Participate in design reviews and provide technical leadership on critical design problems.
Mentor junior engineers and contribute to methodology and flow improvements.

Required Qualifications

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
4–10 years of experience in ASIC/SoC, CPU, RTL, or Physical Design.
Strong understanding of digital design and ASIC development flows.
Hands-on experience with Verilog/SystemVerilog.
Strong understanding of CPU/microprocessor architecture is highly preferred.
Experience with one or more of:

RTL design
Logic design
Synthesis
Physical Design
Static Timing Analysis
Timing closure
PPA optimization
SoC integration

Experience working in Linux/Unix environments.
Strong scripting/programming skills in Python, Tcl, Perl, or Shell.
Strong debugging, analytical, and problem-solving skills.

Preferred Qualifications

CPU / RTL

Experience with CPU pipeline architecture, including Fetch, Decode, Rename, Execute, Load/Store, Cache, MMU, or Branch Prediction.
Experience with out-of-order execution, memory hierarchy, or processor microarchitecture.
Strong RTL coding and microarchitecture implementation experience.
Knowledge of CDC, lint, synthesis, formal verification, and low-power design.

Physical Design

Experience with complete RTL-to-GDSII flow.
Floorplanning, power planning, placement, CTS, routing, and timing closure.
Experience with Cadence Innovus and/or Synopsys Fusion Compiler.
Experience with PrimeTime STA.
MMMC timing analysis and advanced-node implementation.
Experience with IR drop, EM, signal integrity, crosstalk, ECOs, and physical verification.
Knowledge of UPF and low-power implementation.

Staff Engineer

Key skills

About this role