{"id":2545608,"url":"https://alion.io/job/qualcomm-seniorstaff-software-engineer-llm-inference-systems-open-source","title":"Senior/Staff Software Engineer - LLM Inference Systems & Open-Source","company":{"id":94,"name":"Qualcomm","domain":"qualcomm.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/qualcomm","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Eightfold","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":72,"open_postings":1261,"ghost_share":0.213,"stale_share":0.109,"repost_share":0.471,"time_to_fill_p50_days":74,"computed_at":"2026-10-15T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"staff","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Santa Clara, United States","San Diego, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":162000,"max":243000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":243000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":4,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"KV Cache","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false},{"name":"Gateway API","optional":true},{"name":"KServe","optional":true},{"name":"MLIR","optional":true},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":true},{"name":"PyTorch C++","optional":true},{"name":"Rest-Assured","optional":true},{"name":"Triton","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-08T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-14","last_verified_at":"2026-10-15T07:39:11Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":7,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":7},"description":"Company:\nQualcomm Technologies, Inc.Job Area:\nEngineering Group, Engineering Group > Machine Learning EngineeringGeneral Summary:\nWe are looking for experienced software engineers to help build and advance the software ecosystem for large-scale LLM inference on Qualcomm platforms.\nIn this role, you will work at the intersection of open-source LLM serving systems, distributed systems, cloud-native infrastructure, and AI accelerator software. You will contribute to open-source projects such as llm-d and related LLM inference engines, while developing the integrations and capabilities required to run these systems efficiently and reliably on Qualcomm AI accelerators.\nDepending on your background and interests, you may focus more heavily on either distributed LLM serving and orchestration or inference runtime and accelerator integration, while collaborating across both areas.\nThis is an opportunity to work directly with leading open-source communities and help shape the next generation of scalable, production-grade LLM inference infrastructure.\n Minimum Qualifications:\n• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 4+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience.OR\nMaster's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 3+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience.\nOR\nPhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 2+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience.\nResponsibilities\nContribute features, improvements, bug fixes, and architectural enhancements to open-source LLM inference projects, including llm-d and other open-source LLM inference and serving projects.\nDevelop and improve support for Qualcomm AI accelerators in open-source LLM serving frameworks.\nWork with upstream maintainers and open-source communities to design, review, and upstream Qualcomm-related functionality.\nDevelop and enhance inference engine integrations for Qualcomm platforms, including device abstraction, accelerator runtime integration, memory management, distributed execution, compilation, and performance optimization.\nDevelop and improve llm-d integration and deployment capabilities for Qualcomm platforms, including reference architectures, deployment blueprints, configuration, and operational tooling.\nDesign and implement distributed LLM inference capabilities such as:Prefill/decode disaggregation\nKV-cache management and transfer\nDistributed communication and high-performance data movement\nRequest routing and load balancing\nTensor, pipeline, expert, and other forms of model parallelism\nMulti-node and scale-out inference\nAutoscaling and resource management\nFailure detection, recovery, and service resiliency\n\nIntegrate LLM inference software with Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure, including scheduling, autoscaling, networking, observability, and lifecycle management.\nProfile, benchmark, and optimize end-to-end inference performance, including time to first token (TTFT), inter-token latency (ITL), throughput, memory utilization, and scalability.\nDiagnose complex issues spanning model-serving frameworks, distributed runtimes, operating systems, networking, accelerator runtimes, and hardware.\nCollaborate closely with hardware, firmware, compiler, runtime, Kubernetes, and product teams to define requirements and deliver end-to-end solutions.\nDevelop technical documentation, examples, reference deployments, and best practices to help customers and developers deploy LLM workloads on Qualcomm platforms.\nParticipate in architecture discussions and help influence the technical direction of Qualcomm's open-source LLM inference software strategy.\nQualifications\nBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.\nStrong software engineering and debugging skills.\nExperience developing production-quality software in one or more of Python, C++, Go, or Rust.\nStrong understanding of at least one of the following areas:Machine learning or LLM inference systems\nDistributed systems\nAI accelerator or GPU software\nCloud-native/Kubernetes infrastructure\nML compiler or runtime systems\n\nExperience working with complex software systems and debugging problems across multiple layers of the stack.\nAbility to collaborate effectively across teams and communicate technical concepts clearly.\nPreferred Qualifications\nExperience in one or more of the following areas is highly desirable:\nLLM inference engines, model-serving frameworks, or distributed inference systems.\nArchitecture and implementation of high-performance LLM inference runtimes, including model execution, scheduling, memory management, attention, and KV-cache management.\nDistributed LLM inference architectures, including prefill/decode disaggregation and KV-cache transfer.\nllm-d, KServe, Kubernetes Gateway API, Kubernetes operators, or cloud-native AI infrastructure.\nPyTorch internals, torch.compile, Dynamo, Inductor, Triton, MLIR, or other compiler/runtime technologies.\nHardware accelerator software stacks, GPU programming, or custom AI accelerator integration.\nRDMA, RoCE, GPU Direct-style communication, PCIe, high-speed networking, or distributed communication libraries.\nModel parallelism, including tensor parallelism, pipeline parallelism, expert parallelism, and data parallelism.\nPerformance profiling and optimization of distributed AI workloads.\nKubernetes scheduling, autoscaling, networking, observability, and production operations.\nOpen-source development, including contributing patches, participating in design discussions, reviewing code, and collaborating with upstream maintainers.\nExperience working across hardware/software boundaries with hardware, firmware, compiler, runtime, and systems teams.\nQualcomm 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  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).\nTo all Staffing and Recruiting Agencies:Our Careers Site is only for individuals seeking a job at Qualcomm. Staffing and recruiting agencies and individuals being represented by an agency are not authorized to use this site or to submit profiles, applications or resumes, and any such submissions will be considered unsolicited. Qualcomm does not accept unsolicited resumes or applications from agencies. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias, Qualcomm employees or any other company location. Qualcomm is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes/applications.\nEEO 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.\nQualcomm 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.\nPay rangeand Other Compensation & Benefits :\n$162,000.00 - $243,000.00The 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.\nIf you would like more information about this role, please contact Qualcomm Careers.","description_format":"text","description_chars":8831,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":4,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Processors, MCUs & AI Chips","Autonomous Driving","RF & Wireless Hardware","Car Electronics"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-14T16:35:38Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 55 · green card filings: 6","filings_12m":55,"filings_prev_12m":87,"green_card_filings_12m":6,"median_offered_wage_usd":122008,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-03T21:08:04+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":25}],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":7,"expected_fill_days":74,"reasons":["conf:2","velocity","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-15T05:46:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":243000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/qualcomm-seniorstaff-software-engineer-llm-inference-systems-open-source","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/qualcomm-seniorstaff-software-engineer-llm-inference-systems-open-source.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-15T09:40:58Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":14585,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-16T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":94},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=94"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fqualcomm-seniorstaff-software-engineer-llm-inference-systems-open-source"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fqualcomm-seniorstaff-software-engineer-llm-inference-systems-open-source"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fqualcomm-seniorstaff-software-engineer-llm-inference-systems-open-source"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/qualcomm-seniorstaff-software-engineer-llm-inference-systems-open-source\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fqualcomm-seniorstaff-software-engineer-llm-inference-systems-open-source"}]}