Qualcomm
Principal CPU PPA Pathfinding Engineer
$217K–$325K
San Diego, California · On-site · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 13, 2026
- Experience
- 15+ years of relevant industry experience. Minimum qualifications also specify Bachelor's degree and 8+ years, Master's degree and 7+ years, or PhD and 6+ years of related work experience.
- Education
- Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
About the job
Defines and evaluates CPU power, performance, and area options for future Qualcomm products, translating implementation and competitive analysis into recommendations for CPU and product leaders.
What you'll do
- Lead CPU PPA studies and compare options across microarchitecture, process technology, implementation choices, and product constraints.
- Build experiments, estimates, projections, and competitive analyses to identify opportunities and recommend CPU design directions.
- Partner across engineering and product teams to align assumptions, communicate trade-offs, and improve PPA evaluation methods.
What they ask for
- 15+ years of relevant industry experience in CPU or high-performance ASIC/SoC implementation.
- Hands-on experience with physical synthesis, floorplanning, place and route, clock tree synthesis, static timing analysis, power analysis, and signoff.
- Experience evaluating and optimizing PPA for high-frequency CPU cores or similarly complex designs; strong understanding of CPU implementation trade-offs and advanced-node challenges.
- Proficiency in scripting and automation using Python, Tcl, Perl, or similar languages.
Nice to have
- CPU microarchitecture and performance analysis; advanced process-node and technology pathfinding experience.
- Experience with Cadence and/or Synopsys implementation and signoff tools, PPA estimation models, or automated experiment frameworks.
Pay
$216,600.00 - $325,000.00 USD base salary
Tools
Python, Tcl, Perl, Cadence, Synopsys, UPF
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