Company:Qualcomm Atheros, Inc.
Job Area:Engineering Group, Engineering Group > Software Engineering
General Summary:Company Overview
Qualcomm is a world leader in wireless technology and the driving force behind the connected intelligent edge. To support our global engineering workforce, we are building a state-of-the-art Internal AI Ecosystem-a proprietary platform that empowers thousands of engineers with intelligent coding assistants, autonomous agents, and knowledge retrieval systems.
Role Overview
As a Staff AI Development Engineer, you will be a lead architect in the design and implementation of our proprietary internal AI framework. You will move beyond simple "prompt engineering" to build robust, stateful, and cyclic multi-agent systems using LangGraph and LangChain.
This is a high-impact software engineering role. You will not rely on rigid, off-the-shelf agent frameworks (like AutoGen or CrewAI). Instead, you will use low-level primitives to architect custom control flows, enabling LLMs to reason, plan, and execute complex tasks across Qualcomm's massive engineering data landscape. You will define how agents maintain state, handle interrupts, and interact with internal APIs, setting the standard for AI application development across the company.
Key Responsibilities
1. Advanced Agentic Architecture
Custom Workflow Design: Architect and implement complex, cyclic AI workflows using LangGraph. Design state machines that enable agents to plan, execute, reflect, and retry tasks autonomously.
State Management: Engineer robust persistence layers (checkpointers) to manage long-running agent conversations, enabling "human-in-the-loop" interactions where users can guide or correct agent behavior mid-flight.
Multi-Agent Orchestration: Build custom orchestration layers where specialized agents (e.g., "Code Reviewer," "Doc Searcher," "Test Generator") collaborate via defined graph edges and conditional routing logic.
2.Framework & Tool Development
Internal SDK Evolution: Contribute core features to Qualcomm's internal Python AI SDK, simplifying how other teams consume LLMs, embeddings, and vector stores.
Tool Abstraction: Develop standardized interfaces (based on LangChain tools) that allow agents to securely interact with enterprise systems (Jira, GitLab, SQL Databases, Proprietary APIs).
Graph-Based RAG: Go beyond simple semantic search by implementing GraphRAG and advanced retrieval strategies. Build pipelines that combine vector search with knowledge graph traversals to answer complex engineering queries.
3.Production Engineering & Scalability
Asynchronous Python: Write high-performance, non-blocking Python code using asyncio to handle concurrent agent execution and high-throughput token streaming.
API Design: Expose agent workflows via FastAPI microservices, ensuring strict typing (Pydantic), validation, and comprehensive open-api documentation.
Evaluation & Observability: Design "LLM-as-a-Judge" evaluation pipelines to measure the efficacy of custom agent graphs. Implement tracing (e.g., LangSmith or internal equivalents) to debug complex chains of thought.
4.Technical Leadership
Pattern Definition: Define and document design patterns for agentic AI (e.g., Plan-and-Solve, ReAct, Map-Reduce) for the wider engineering organization.
Mentorship: Serve as a technical mentor to Senior and Junior engineers, conducting rigorous code reviews and driving best practices in Python software design and AI safety.
Required Skills:
- 7+ years of professional Software Engineering experience.
- Python Mastery: Expert-level proficiency in Python. Deep understanding of AsyncIO, Pydantic, decorators, and metaprogramming.
- LangChain/LangGraph: Proven, hands-on experience building applications with LangChain and LangGraph. You must understand the difference between a Chain (DAG) and a Graph (Cyclic) and know when to apply each.
- AI Fundamentals: Solid understanding of LLM mechanics (context windows, tokenization, temperature), embedding models, and vector stores.
- System Design: Experience architecting distributed systems, microservices, and handling state in stateless environments (REST).
Preferred Qualifications
- Master's or PhD in Computer Science or Artificial Intelligence.
- Advanced RAG: Experience implementing Hybrid Search (Keyword + Semantic), Re-ranking (Cross-Encoders), or Parent-Child document retrieval strategies.
- Graph Theory: Academic or practical understanding of graph theory, finite state machines (FSM), and their application to AI control flow.
- Database Expertise: Hands-on experience with Vector Databases (Milvus, Qdrant, Chroma) and Graph Databases (Neo4j).
- DevOps/MLOps: Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines for deploying AI applications.
- Evaluation Frameworks: Experience with frameworks like Ragas or DeepEval for quantifying RAG and Agent performance.
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.
Qualcomm 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).
To 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.
EEO 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.Qualcomm 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.
Pay range and Other Compensation & Benefits: $134,800.00 - $202,200.00
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.
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