Hardware Design Engineer - Application Engineering, Staff

Job Area

Engineering Group, Engineering Group > Hardware Engineering

Company

Qualcomm Canada ULC

Job Area

Engineering Group, Engineering Group > Hardware Engineering

General Summary

As a leading technology innovator, Qualcomm pushes the boundaries of what\'s possible to enable next-generation experiences and drives digital transformation to help create a smarter, connected future for all. As a Qualcomm Hardware Engineer, you will plan, design, optimize, verify, and test electronic systems, bring-up yield, circuits, mechanical systems, Digital/Analog/RF/optical systems, equipment and packaging, test systems, FPGA, and/or DSP systems that launch cutting‑edge, world class products. Qualcomm Hardware Engineers collaborate with cross-functional teams to develop solutions and meet performance requirements.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor\'s degree in Computer Science, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Engineering, or related field and 4+ years of Hardware Engineering or related work experience.
• Master\'s degree in Computer Science, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Engineering, or related field and 3+ years of Hardware Engineering or related work experience.
• PhD in Computer Science, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Engineering, or related field and 2+ years of Hardware Engineering or related work experience.

Hardware Design Engineer, Staff – Application Engineering

About The Role

We are seeking a highly motivated Staff Hardware Design Engineer to join our Application Engineering team supporting next-generation Optical DSP, Active Electrical Cable (AEC), and Optical Transceiver solutions for AI and cloud infrastructure. In this role, you will be responsible for the design, development, bring‑up, validation, and support of evaluation platforms used for customer engagements, product characterization, and application development. You will work closely with Application Engineering and Hardware Engineering to accelerate product adoption and enable customer success. The ideal candidate combines strong board‑level hardware design expertise with hands‑on laboratory debugging experience and a deep understanding of high‑speed signal integrity and power integrity challenges in 100G/lane, 200G/lane, and future 400G/lane PAM4 systems.

What You\'ll Do

Evaluation Board Development

• Independently own EVB development projects from specification through validation.
• Create hardware specifications, design documents, schematics, PCB layout requirements, assembly guidelines, and validation plans.
• Lead hardware bring‑up and debugging efforts for application engineering platforms.
• Act as the hardware expert supporting both internal engineering teams and external customers.
• Drive signal integrity and power integrity analysis to support successful product deployment.
• Serve as the primary hardware liaison for application engineering activities.

EVB Bring‑Up, Validation & Debug

• Lead first-power‑on and bring‑up activities for newly developed hardware platforms.
• Perform board-level debug involving:
• Perform root‑cause analysis and drive corrective actions for hardware issues.
• Support system characterization and reliability testing activities.

Customer Optical Transceiver Support

• Support customers integrating DSP products into optical transceivers and AEC platforms.
• Review customer schematic designs and PCB layouts.
• Assist customers in resolving hardware-related issues during design and deployment phases.
• Work directly with customer hardware teams during bring‑up and qualification activities.

Power Integrity & Power Delivery Design

• Analyze power delivery networks for high-performance DSP and optical products.
• Perform power integrity simulations and validation using industry-standard tools.
• Evaluate:
  • Voltage ripple
  • Transient response
  • Decoupling effectiveness
  • Power distribution performance
• Optimize power delivery architectures to meet performance and reliability requirements.

What You\'ll Need

• 5 to 8 years of experience in high-speed hardware development, PCB design for high-speed SerDes or optical transceiver design
• Strong experience in schematic capture, PCB design review, and hardware development processes.
• Familiar with high-speed PAM4 signaling and SerDes-based systems.
• Hands‑on experience with EVB design, bring‑up, validation, and debug.
• Strong knowledge of signal integrity, fundamentals and channel analysis.
• Deep Knowledge of power integrity concepts and power delivery network design.
• Experience with laboratory equipment for EVB bring up:
• Strong troubleshooting and root-cause analysis skills.
• Excellent communication and documentation skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Signal Integrity simulation tools such as HFSS
• Experience with optical transceiver design
• Experience with thermal analysis and mechanical integration considerations.
• Knowledge of PCB stack-up design and high-speed materials.
• Experience with manufacturing qualifications and production support.

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 View email address on click.appcast.io 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.

Pay Range And Other Compensation & Benefits

$121,000.00 - $171,000.00

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.