Qualcomm India Private Limited
Engineering Group, Engineering Group > Software Engineering
General Summary:
DSP Firmware, Linux/HLOS & Embedded Systems
Location: Bangalore, India
We are looking for a hands-on technical leader to drive architecture, development, and delivery of high-performance DSP firmware, Linux/HLOS integration, and platform software for next-generation SoC platforms. The role requires deep expertise in real-time embedded systems, low-level processor software, system integration, performance optimization, customer engagement, and technical team leadership.
The successful candidate will own critical firmware and platform components, guide hardware-software interfaces, and drive technical decisions from pre-silicon development and silicon bring-up through product commercialization.
- Define software architecture for real-time DSP and processor subsystems, including integration with Linux-based high-level operating systems (HLOS).
- Own low-level software spanning boot, board support packages, RTOS integration, DSP services, Linux kernel and user-space interfaces, device drivers, middleware, system services, and developer frameworks.
- Drive architecture decisions balancing deterministic latency, throughput, power, memory footprint, reliability, security, and scalability.
- Influence hardware-software partitioning, DSP workload offload, host-subsystem interfaces, and the long-term platform roadmap.
- Define scalable software models for single-core, multi-core, and heterogeneous compute configurations.
- Lead resolution of complex system issues spanning DSP and processor cores, silicon, firmware, RTOS, Linux/HLOS, kernel and user-space drivers, middleware, and host software.
- Drive multi-core and heterogeneous compute architecture, DSP workload partitioning, Linux/HLOS offload, and real-time scheduling.
- Guide interrupt, exception, timer, clock, reset, watchdog, and power-domain frameworks.
- Own memory architecture and optimization across tightly coupled memory, on-chip memory, external memory, caches, memory protection, DMA, shared memory, and coherency.
- Drive boot, image loading, secure boot, subsystem startup, restart, fault handling, recovery, and diagnostic dump mechanisms.
- Architect inter-processor communication, shared-memory transport, synchronization, remote procedure calls, and Linux/HLOS-to-DSP interfaces.
- Guide Linux kernel drivers, user-space services, DSP drivers, peripheral drivers, data movement engines, and platform services.
- Drive DSP performance optimization using profiling, instruction-level analysis, vector and parallel processing, fixed-point arithmetic, signal-processing optimization, memory-access optimization, and compiler/toolchain capabilities.
- Lead power optimization across dynamic frequency and voltage scaling, clock gating, retention, sleep states, and coordinated HLOS-subsystem power management.
- Drive platform security, privilege separation, memory protection, access control, and subsystem isolation.
- Lead pre-silicon validation, silicon enablement, board bring-up, platform stabilization, and production readiness.
- Drive measurable improvements in performance, power, latency, memory, stability, and reliability.
- Translate product and customer requirements into architecture, milestones, and executable engineering plans.
- Partner with hardware, DSP, Linux/HLOS, systems, validation, tools, applications, and customer engineering teams to deliver end-to-end solutions.
- Lead technical reviews, root-cause analysis, and risk management for critical deliverables.
- Mentor engineers in firmware design, Linux integration, debugging, optimization, and system-level problem solving.
- Manage and develop engineers while remaining technically hands-on and accountable for delivery quality.
- 11+ years of experience in embedded software, DSP or processor firmware, Linux/HLOS integration, board support packages, device drivers, or platform software development.
- Expert-level proficiency in C/C++ with strong understanding of assembly-level debugging and processor architecture.
- Strong experience with RTOS environments such as Zephyr or FreeRTOS, along with Embedded Linux or another Linux-based HLOS environment.
- Deep understanding of RTOS internals, scheduling, synchronization, interrupts, exceptions, and real-time constraints.
- Strong understanding of Linux kernel fundamentals, user-space services, device-driver models, system startup, power management, and debugging across HLOS and DSP boundaries.
- Strong knowledge of boot flows, linker scripts, memory maps, executable formats, image loading, and firmware packaging.
- Hands-on experience with caches, tightly coupled memory, memory protection, DMA, shared memory, coherency, and memory bandwidth optimization.
- Experience with Linux/HLOS-to-DSP communication, multi-core synchronization, subsystem lifecycle management, and fault recovery.
- Experience with DSP profiling, compiler optimization, vector processing, fixed-point arithmetic, low-level optimization, and performance-per-watt analysis.
- Proven ability to debug hardware-software issues using JTAG, trace, crash dumps, logs, hardware instruments, Linux debugging tools, and profilers.
- Proven experience delivering products from pre-silicon development and silicon bring-up through production.
- Experience leading engineers while remaining technically hands-on.
- Strong customer-facing communication, technical negotiation, and leadership skills.
- Proficiency in using AI-assisted development tools to improve design, implementation, debugging, documentation, and engineering efficiency.
- Experience developing DSP firmware and Linux/HLOS integration for compute, audio, sensor, communication, imaging, or machine-learning subsystems.
- Experience with high-throughput signal-processing pipelines, fixed-point arithmetic, vectorized algorithms, and latency-sensitive workloads.
- Experience with simulation, emulation, virtual platforms, pre-silicon validation, and automated firmware testing.
- Familiarity with safety, security, reliability, or functional-isolation requirements in production SoCs.
Minimum Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 4+ years of Software Engineering or related work experience.
OR
Master's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 3+ years of Software Engineering or related work experience.
OR
PhD in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 2+ years of Software Engineering or related work experience.
- 2+ years of work experience with Programming Language such as C, C++, Java, Python, etc.
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