Company:
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
Job Area:
Engineering Group, Engineering Group > Software Applications Engineering
General Summary:
Join us in sunny San Diego for innovative and impactful software development projects. QCT Software Automation and Tools (QSWAT) is seeking a highly skilled Senior Staff Engineer, Quality Assurance to advance our quality engineering practice and bring modern approaches, deep engineering rigor, and fresh perspectives to our organization. This role extends beyond testing to shape how quality is built, measured, and sustained across the product lifecycle.
This is a senior, hands‑on engineering role for someone passionate about building next‑generation quality systems while advancing quality engineering practices in close partnership with existing tech leads and architects to scale impact across teams. The ideal candidate brings a demonstrated commitment to staying current with industry best practices in quality engineering and applying relevant, proven approaches to raise the organization’s bar.
As a senior contributor within the QA team, you will influence architecture and design decisions through engineering depth and quality expertise, partner closely with Development and DevOps teams, and help move quality earlier in the development process to ensure scalable, reliable, and user‑centric systems.
Key Responsibilities
Technical Strategy & Quality Engineering
- Define and evolve quality engineering practices, including test architecture, tooling, and standards across teams.
- Drive a shift from testing as a phase to quality as a shared responsibility embedded throughout development.
- Evaluate and apply modern QA techniques such as contract testing, testability‑driven design, risk‑based testing, and observability‑led quality.
- Provide technical input on automation strategies, test frameworks, and CI/CD quality gates.
- Stay current with industry best practices, emerging tools, and modern quality engineering methods, and selectively apply proven approaches to improve quality and developer productivity.
- Apply AI technologies across the QA lifecycle to strengthen automation, reduce noise, and accelerate quality decision‑making.
Hands‑on Engineering
- Design, build, and maintain scalable, reliable automated test frameworks across UI, API, integration, performance, and reliability testing.
- Improve test infrastructure and tooling through hands‑on coding, and contribute to production code when needed to improve testability and observability.
- Lead complex test initiatives supporting large, cross‑functional features and platform‑level changes.
- Triage and resolve systemic quality issues, flaky tests, and difficult‑to‑reproduce defects.
- Architect and maintain production‑like test environments, including containerized and ephemeral environments, to support repeatable testing and efficient debugging.
- Use AI‑assisted approaches to automate test creation and maintenance, accelerate root‑cause analysis, and generate clear, actionable quality insights and reports.
Collaboration & Influence
- Partner closely with Software Engineers, Architects, Product Managers, and DevOps teams to influence design decisions early.
- Collaborate with existing tech leads and architects to ensure testability and quality considerations are built into system design.
- Act as a trusted advisor on quality risks, tradeoffs, and release readiness.
- Promote consistent quality standards across geographically distributed teams.
- Represent quality engineering perspectives in design reviews and technical discussions.
Mentorship & Culture
- Mentor and coach QA and Software Engineers on automation, testing strategy, and a strong quality mindset.
- Raise the technical bar through code reviews, technical discussions, and sharing best practices.
- Support the professional growth of senior‑ and staff‑level engineers through guidance and knowledge sharing.
- Share patterns and approaches for AI‑enabled automation, triage, and reporting to encourage consistent adoption across teams.
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.
Qualifications
- 7+ years of experience in Quality Engineering, Software Engineering, or a closely related role.
- 5+ years of experience leading or influencing a global QA organization.
- 3+ years of hands‑on experience with one or more programming languages (e.g., Java, TypeScript, Python).
- 3+ years of experience with web UI test automation tools such as Playwright, Cypress, or Selenium.
- 3+ years of experience with performance or load testing tools such as Locust, JMeter, or Artillery.
- 3+ years of experience with BDD frameworks and tools such as Cucumber or SpecFlow.
- Strong experience designing and implementing automated test frameworks at scale.
- Solid understanding of modern software architectures, including microservices, APIs, and cloud‑native systems.
- Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
- Experience integrating quality signals into CI/CD pipelines.
- Demonstrated ability to influence technical decisions without direct authority.
- Experience setting up and maintaining test environments that support reliable automation and efficient debugging.
- Experience using AI tools or approaches to improve testing productivity, accelerate triage, and generate meaningful quality insights.
Preferred Qualifications
- Master’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
- Proven ability to apply AI across the QA lifecycle to improve code coverage and testing productivity.
- Experience with reliability, resilience, or security testing.
- Proficiency with REST and/or GraphQL testing frameworks.
- Experience with test reporting and quality analytics, including dashboards and trend analysis.
- 5+ years in a senior or staff‑level technical role, with or without direct reports.
- Experience with SQL Server or similar databases.
- Proficiency with Git, Perforce, or other source control systems.
- Familiarity with Agile software development methodologies.
- Experience with CI/CD tools such as Jenkins.
Web development experience with frameworks such as Flask, ASP.NET Core, Django, or Laravel.
Experience working with open-source projects and understanding our customer-facing tools to support developer-first business initiatives.
On-Site Requirements
- On‑site presence is required five days a week, excluding Qualcomm holidays and vacation time.
Why Qualcomm
- Be part of a company at the forefront of technological innovation.
- Work on impactful platforms and tools used across multiple business units.
- Tackle complex, meaningful engineering problems at scale.
- Grow your career in a collaborative, inclusive environment that values technical excellence and continuous learning.
If you are passionate about building advanced quality systems, solving hard engineering problems, and applying proven industry practices to make a real impact, we encourage you to apply.
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).
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EEO Employer: Qualcomm is an equal opportunity employer; all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, Veteran status, or any other protected classification.
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.
Pay range and Other Compensation & Benefits:
$157,600.00 - $236,400.00
The above pay scale reflects the broad, minimum to maximum, pay scale for this job code for the location for which it has been posted. Even more importantly, please note that salary is only one component of total compensation at Qualcomm. We also offer a competitive annual discretionary bonus program and opportunity for annual RSU grants (employees on sales-incentive plans are not eligible for our annual bonus). In addition, our highly competitive benefits package is designed to support your success at work, at home, and at play. Your recruiter will be happy to discuss all that Qualcomm has to offer – and you can review more details about our US benefits at this link.
If you would like more information about this role, please contact Qualcomm Careers.
