ADAS Platform Customer Engineering Lead, Detroit

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General Summary:

Role Overview

We are seeking a highly experienced ADAS Platform Customer Engineering Lead to provide technical and customer leadership for strategic automotive ADAS engagements in the Detroit area.

This is a senior, customer-facing technical leadership position responsible for driving successful adoption, integration, validation, and production deployment of Qualcomm ADAS compute platforms at leading automotive OEMs and Tier-1 partners.

The successful candidate will bring 20+ years of automotive embedded systems experience, including at least 5+ years in customer program management, customer engineering, or a senior technical leadership role supporting a production ADAS program.

The candidate must have strong system-level understanding of modern ADAS compute architectures and be able to operate across hardware, software, safety, security, camera, AI and system-performance domains. The role requires someone equally comfortable engaging an OEM's senior engineering leadership, working directly with system architects, and driving complex technical issues to closure with global engineering teams.

Key Responsibilities

Customer Technical Leadership

• Serve as the senior program and technical interface for key Detroit-area OEM and Tier-1 ADAS customers.
• Build trusted relationships with engineering leaders, program managers, architects and platform teams.
• Understand customer ADAS roadmaps, E/E architectures, compute requirements and production constraints, and translate them into actionable engagements for Qualcomm engineering teams.
• Lead executive and technical customer reviews covering architecture, program status, technical risks, issue resolution and production readiness.
• Act as the technical escalation leader for complex cross-functional customer issues.

ADAS Platform & System Leadership

• Lead customer deployment of advanced ADAS compute platforms using Qualcomm chipset and software products from initial architecture and platform evaluation through integration, validation, SOP and post-production support.
• Provide system-level leadership across:
  • Heterogeneous automotive compute architectures
  • QNX and/or other automotive operating systems
  • Hypervisors and multi-OS environments
  • Functional safety and safety architecture
  • Platform and system security
  • Camera and sensor processing
  • AI/ML and neural-network acceleration
  • Middleware, IPC and inter-processor communication
  • Vehicle interfaces and automotive networks
  • System boot, power and thermal management
  • Memory, bandwidth and compute utilization
  • System performance, latency and optimization
  • Diagnostics, logging, telemetry and fault management
• Understand interactions among SoC hardware, BSP/platform software, operating systems, middleware, perception workloads and vehicle-level ADAS functionality.

Program Execution & Production

• Provide technical leadership across the complete customer lifecycle, from RFI/RFQ and architecture definition through development, integration, validation and production launch.
• Drive cross-functional issue resolution spanning silicon, hardware, platform software, operating systems, safety, security, camera, AI and application teams.
• Establish clear technical priorities, dependencies, owners and closure criteria for critical customer issues.
• Drive platform maturity and production readiness using appropriate validation methodologies including SIL, HIL, simulation/ReSim, bench and vehicle testing.
• Identify architectural and execution risks early and drive mitigation plans with customer and internal engineering organizations.
• Lead technical recovery efforts for critical programs and customer escalations where necessary.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Coordinate large, geographically distributed engineering organizations supporting customer programs.
• Work closely with product management, systems engineering, SoC development, software, safety, security, AI, camera and validation organizations.
• Provide clear executive-level communication of program status, technical risks, trade-offs and required decisions.

Minimum Qualifications:

OR

Master's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 7+ years of Software Applications Engineering, Software Development experience, or related work experience.

OR

PhD in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 6+ years of Software Applications Engineering, Software Development experience, or related work experience.

• 4+ years of experience with Programming Language such as C, C++, Java, Python, etc.

• 4+ years of experience with debugging techniques.

Preferred Qualifications

• 20+ years of professional experience in automotive embedded systems, semiconductor platforms, ADAS, autonomous driving, automotive electronics or closely related fields.
• Master's degree or equivalent advanced technical experience.
• 5+ years in one or more of the following:
  • Customer Engineering leadership
  • Customer/OEM Technical Program Management
  • ADAS Platform Engineering leadership
  • Technical leadership of an OEM or Tier-1 production ADAS program
• Demonstrated experience with Qualcomm Snapdragon automotive platforms or competing automotive compute platforms, ADAS/domain-controller SoCs.
• Proven experience supporting complex automotive products from architecture/development through production launch/SOP.
• Strong understanding of SoC-based embedded compute platforms and software architectures.
• Technical depth in several of the following areas:
  • QNX
  • AUTOSAR
  • Functional safety and ISO 26262
  • Camera and image-processing pipelines
  • AI/ML compute and accelerators
  • ADAS sensing and sensor interfaces
  • Hypervisors and multi-OS architectures
  • BSP, device drivers and platform software
  • System performance and optimization
  • Vehicle networks/interfaces and diagnostics
• Experience leading complex, multi-team technical problem solving and customer escalations.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate sophisticated technical topics to senior customer and executive audiences.
• Direct experience working with a major automotive OEM or Tier-1 on an L2/L2+/L3 ADAS production program.
• Hands-on experience with Qualcomm Snapdragon Ride / Snapdragon Digital Chassis technologies or competing high-performance automotive SoCs.
• Experience with centralized compute, ADAS domain controllers or emerging automotive E/E architectures.
• Experience with camera/radar-based ADAS architectures and vehicle integration.
• Experience with ASPICE, V-model development, safety case development, ASIL programs and structured production-readiness processes.
• Experience with SIL/HIL, simulation/ReSim, vehicle validation and performance/KPI-driven release qualification.
• Experience recovering complex programs or managing technically challenging production/customer escalations.
• Prior experience working directly with North American automotive OEM engineering organizations.

Leadership Profile

The ideal candidate is a technically credible customer leader.

They should be able to:

• Go deep technically with platform and ADAS architects.
• Go broad systemically across SoC, OS, safety, security, camera, AI and vehicle integration.
• Stay engaged through production, rather than stopping at architecture or design-win.
• Drive ambiguity to closure across multiple engineering organizations.
• Represent Qualcomm confidently with senior OEM engineering leadership.
• Translate customer problems into engineering priorities and engineering constraints into clear customer choices.
• Remain technically engaged during critical debug and escalation situations while providing concise communication to leadership.

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Pay rangeand Other Compensation & Benefits :

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.