Qualcomm · 1 hour ago
Principal Engineer, Solutions Architect Lead – Industrial & Embedded IoT, Edge AI On‑Prem Appliance
Santa Clara, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
$220K/yr - $330K/yr
6+ years expQualcomm Technologies, Inc. is a global leader in connected intelligent edge, focusing on AI, edge computing and connectivity. They are seeking a Principal Systems Solutions Architect to define and develop scalable blueprints for GenAI/Hybrid-AI deployments, collaborating with various teams to tailor solutions for enterprise customers across industries.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)Generative AISoftwareTelecommunicationsWireless
Responsibilities
Own solution blueprints: Design, develop, document, and maintain reference designs and delivery playbooks that accelerate repeatable GenAI/Hybrid‑AI deployments on AI on‑prem Appliance across priority verticals (e.g., industrial, retail, smart spaces, healthcare, public sector)
Vertical customization: Partner with Product Management, Account Managers, Regional teams, Engineering and field teams to adapt blueprints to customer‑specific requirements/KPIs , data, infrastructure, privacy/security, and compliance constraints; drive solution acceptance and production hand‑off
Be hands‑on: Proficient in SW skills; Design and develop reference designs, Build POCs and pilot systems; instrument, profile, and optimize models and pipelines end‑to‑end (latency, throughput, accuracy, cost, power/thermals, footprint)
Multi‑model AI expertise: Apply and integrate LLMs, VLMs, VLAs, CV/CNN, and NLP stacks; select/quantize/prune/distill models; tune adapters; and integrate guardrails, retrieval, and evaluation frameworks
Solutions focus: Deliver production‑grade patterns for video analytics, enterprise GenAI (RAG, document AI, code & task copilots), and multimodal agents that interact with enterprise systems and tools
Hybrid AI architecture: Partition workloads across on‑device AI for a variety of edge devices, , on‑prem/edge boxes, and cloud AI; orchestrate data, models, and agents; design for offline/online modes, observability, and device management
Agentic AI: Architect and implement agentic workflows (multi‑agent planning, tool use/function calling, memory, safety) using Qualcomm platforms and industry frameworks; define KPIs and evaluation loops
Customer focus: Engage with customers from discovery to scale‑out; translate business objectives into measurable technical requirements; lead design reviews, roadmap alignment, and executive readouts
Cross‑functional leadership: Work with CE, Product Management, Solutions, Platform SW, Performance, Security, and Research to leverage existing knowledge and infrastructure, land features in reference design releases, software roadmaps and deliver outcomes
Innovation and Thought leadership: Create best‑practice guides, participate at leading industry events and workshops; stay abreast on the latest tech developments in the field, be aware of the competitive landscape, mentor engineers
Qualification
Required
Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 8+ years of Systems Engineering or related work experience
OR Master's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 7+ years of Systems Engineering or related work experience
OR PhD in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 6+ years of Systems Engineering or related work experience
Preferred
Proven track record (Principal level) architecting and shipping systems‑level AI solutions that combine application, runtime, and platform considerations (performance, power, memory, cost, security)
Deep hands‑on proficiency with LLM/VLM/CV/NLP model lifecycles: selection, fine‑tuning/LoRA, compression/quantization, runtime integration, and hardware‑aware optimization and deployment
Expertise designing hybrid AI: placing workloads across device/edge/cloud; knowledge of data pipelines, streaming/vision services, vector/RAG stores, feature stores, and observability
Strong software engineering foundations (Python/C++), containerization, AI accelerators, and profiling tools; fluency with modern inference/runtime stacks
Customer‑facing experience on launching new AI-enabled products working with engineering and product management teams to drive POCs to production with clear KPIs
Excellent communication and leadership skills to influence across teams and with customers/peers and executives
Experience building video analytics pipelines (tracking, action/event detection, privacy filters), and integrating them with enterprise VMS/IoT backbones and AI based vision solutions
Designing and deploying agentic AI systems (multi‑agent planners, tool ecosystems, policy/guardrails, eval harnesses); familiarity with orchestration frameworks and agent runtimes
Model/system benchmarking and E2E evaluation (latency/accuracy/cost/power), testing, and operations for AI at the edge
Background with Qualcomm AI platforms and heterogenous acceleration; familiarity with on‑device inference and memory/power budgeting
Domain exposure in one or more verticals: industrial automation/IIoT, retail analytics, healthcare operations, smart buildings/cities, logistics, or public sector
Graduate degree in CS/EE/CE or equivalent applied experience
15+ years of hands-on experience as an individual contributor with 10+ years in the AI/ML fields
Benefits
Competitive annual discretionary bonus program
Opportunity for annual RSU grants
Highly competitive benefits package
Company
Qualcomm
Qualcomm designs wireless technologies and semiconductors that power connectivity, communication, and smart devices.
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
Qualcomm has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (2013)
2024 (1910)
2023 (3216)
2022 (2885)
2021 (2104)
2020 (1181)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$3.5M1991-12-20IPO
1988-01-01Undisclosed· $3.5M
Leadership Team
Cristiano Amon
President & CEO
I
Isaac Eteminan
CEO
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