[Hiring] Senior Staff Engineer - Technical Standards @Qualcomm

Role Description

As a senior Technical Standards contributor and participant, you will work closely with internal and external partners to improve and evolve industry technical standards while representing Qualcomm as a delegate in standardization forums and industry organizations. Your responsibility will include:

• Understanding data center industry landscapes and competitors' strengths and weaknesses.
• Collaborating with internal partners to identify existing and emerging standards for Qualcomm to focus on.
• Helping review and guide internal product requirements and specifications for conformance with the standards.
• Working with attorneys to file patents that protect the novel IP aspects of any inventions.

The primary focus for this role is wired connectivity infrastructure involving high-speed optical and electrical SerDes standards for core data center infrastructure. This includes:

• Implications of solving problems across photonics, packaging, materials science, and system architecture.

Technical Focus Areas

• Direct experience with IEEE 802.3 and OIF.
• Aware of related developments in other data center interconnect standards ecosystems including OCI MSA, OCP, UEC, and UALink.
• Deep understanding of 200G, 400G and forward-looking 800G/1.6T Ethernet rate evolution, including PAM4/PAM6 modulation, FEC, equalization, channel loss, BER targets and link-budget tradeoffs.
• Knowledge of scale-up, scale-out and scale-across data center fabrics, including electrical copper reach limits, active electrical cables, linear pluggable optics, co-packaged optics, near-packaged optics, and optical module architectures.
• Strong ecosystem credibility with data center silicon, optics, connector, cable, module, switch, NIC and hyperscaler stakeholders.
• Ability to assess competitive technology directions, identify standards gaps, and shape specifications to support Qualcomm product and IP roadmap objectives.
• Ability to translate hyperscaler, AI accelerator, switch silicon, and optical module requirements into practical SerDes, PHY, controller and standards engagement priorities.
• Ability to check posted technical material for accuracy and prepare internal technical material and analysis.
• Ability to establish and play a leading role in a potential future “800G Interest Group” (or similar name) as a means to promote Qualcomm credibility and thought leadership in Data Center connectivity.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
• 7+ years of experience in system design, validation, or related engineering roles.
• 2+ years of experience participating in technical standards bodies or industry organizations.
• Demonstrated ability to influence across teams and organizations.
• Effective communication, collaboration, and stakeholder engagement skills.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in optical, SerDes and system design, modeling, validation, or test.
• 4+ years of active participation in standards organizations (e.g., IEEE, OCP, PCI-SIG or similar).
• 5+ years of work experience in a role requiring interaction with senior leadership.
• 5+ years in a technical leadership role.
• Deep understanding of data center ecosystems, including enterprise, HPC, and hyperscale environments.
• Authored or co-authored contributions in IEEE, OCP or similar.
• Has implemented or influenced deployable OCP-compliant platforms.
• Experience designing and developing SerDes across full lifecycle (architecture, design, implementation, verification, validation, through manufacturing and silicon qualification).
• Knowledge of global data center market dynamics and competitive landscape.
• Background in technical leadership roles with demonstrated impact.
• Familiarity with Qualcomm technologies and semiconductor platforms (preferred).
• Established network within industry, standards bodies, or academia (preferred).
• Excellent written, presentation, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Willingness to travel as required.

Benefits

• Global travel several times per year for standards organization forums.