Data Engineer, Staff
Qualcomm Inc/De
San Diego, CA · Posted September 17, 2026
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Where San Diego, CA ranks
Where San Diego, CA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #1Cities hosting the most business conferences in the West Coast78 conferences · of 17
- #2Cities hosting the most human resources conferences6 conferences · of 10
- #3Best cities for life sciences and biotech jobs454 openings · of 41
- #3Best cities for aerospace and defense jobs377 openings · of 67
- #3Cities hosting the most legal services conferences7 conferences · of 17
- #3Cities hosting the most staffing & human capital conferences6 conferences · of 8
Rankings about data & analytics jobs
- Best cities for data and analytics jobs #1 New York (1,713 openings)
- Best cities for data and analytics pay after cost of living #1 Foster ($232k)
- Most requested AI skills in data and analytics jobs #1 Machine learning engineering (17.1%)
- AI tools named most often in data and analytics jobs #1 Databricks (7.6%)
- Employers with the most data and analytics jobs #1 Amazon (711 roles)
Data & Analytics jobs · Top Data & Analytics employers · All rankings
Pay compared with the market
This listing does not state pay. Across 203 open data engineer listings that state pay, the middle half runs $116,500 to $158,500 and the median is $135,000.
Listed pay is what employers advertise, not what people are paid.
How AI is used in this kind of work
Among database architects, AI is already used for a large share of the tasks. Measured exposure for database architects: 58% (high).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
Skills this job asks for
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About the job
Company: Qualcomm Incorporated
Job Area: Information Technology Group, Information Technology Group > IT Data Engineer
General Summary:
We are seeking a Staff Data Engineer to design, build, and operate a modern, scalable data platform with Databricks Lakehouse as a core foundation.
In this role, you will focus on building reusable data frameworks, shared platform components, and standardized pipelines that enable teams to deliver data products efficiently and consistently. Your work will support analytics, reporting, and downstream advanced use cases (including AI and machine learning), with a strong emphasis on reliability, governance, developer productivity, and intelligent automation.
This is a hands-on role with meaningful ownership across data engineering, framework development, AI‑driven automation, platform reliability, security, and cost management, while contributing to architectural decisions and data standards.
This role requires full-time onsite work in San Diego, CA (5 days per week).
**This position is not eligible for Qualcomm immigration sponsorship.**
Minimum Qualifications: • 5+ years of IT-related work experience with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems or a related field. OR 7+ years of IT-related work experience without a Bachelor’s degree.
• 3+ years of work experience with programming (e.g., Java, Python). • 3+ years of work experience with SQL or NoSQL Databases. • 3+ years of work experience with Data Structures and algorithms.
What You’ll Do
Data Engineering, Frameworks & AI‑Driven Automation
Design, build, and maintain scalable batch and streaming data pipelines
Develop reusable data engineering frameworks, libraries, and templates for ingestion, transformation, validation, and publishing
Establish standardized patterns for data modeling, transformations, and pipeline orchestration
Implement end-to-end data workflows from raw ingestion to curated analytical datasets
Leverage AI‑based techniques to automate and optimize data engineering workflows, such as:
Intelligent schema inference and evolution
Automated data quality checks and anomaly detection
Pipeline failure detection and self-healing mechanisms
Ensure data quality, reliability, and performance across pipelines and shared frameworks
Support downstream consumers such as analytics, reporting, and AI/ML teams
Reliability, Operations & Intelligent Automation
Define and monitor SLIs/SLOs for data pipelines, frameworks, and platform availability
Participate in incident response, on-call rotations, and post-incident reviews
Apply AI‑assisted monitoring and alerting to proactively detect performance issues, data drift, and operational anomalies
Implement security, compliance, and data governance controls across shared data assets
Drive performance tuning and cost optimization, including automated recommendations for resource utilization and workload optimization
Collaboration & Technical Leadership
Partner with analytics, application, and platform teams to understand common data needs and platform gaps
Drive adoption of standardized data frameworks, automation patterns, and best practices across teams
Contribute to data architecture decisions, platform standards, and design guidelines
Mentor junior engineers and provide technical guidance, including best practices for automating data workflows
Qualifications
Data Engineering, Frameworks & System Design
8+ years of experience building and operating data platforms or distributed data systems
Proven experience designing and building reusable data engineering frameworks, libraries, or platform components
Strong experience designing scalable, reliable data pipelines using standardized patterns
Solid understanding of data modeling, storage formats, schema evolution, and query performance
Experience implementing automation in data pipelines, including rule‑based or AI‑assisted approaches
Ability to reason about architectural trade-offs across scalability, cost, reliability, and security
Cloud & Data Platform Experience
Strong hands-on experience with AWS, including IAM, networking, and multi-account setups
Proven experience with Databricks Lakehouse, including:
Delta Lake
Unity Catalog
Strong proficiency in Python for framework development, data processing, and automation
Experience building data platforms that support multiple consumers and automated workflows
Security & Communication
Understanding of cloud security best practices and data governance
Experience working in regulated or compliance-driven environments
Strong communication skills and the ability to drive adoption of shared frameworks and automation patterns across teams
Nice-to-Have
Experience building AI‑assisted or intelligent automation for:
Data quality monitoring
Pipeline observability
Cost or performance optimization
Experience building internal data platforms or enablement frameworks
Experience supporting AI/ML teams as platform consumers (without owning models)
Experience with data observability and monitoring tools
Experience with enterprise ingestion tools (e.g., Fivetran, HVR)
Experience with data lineage or metadata management
Familiarity with secret management tools (Vault or similar)
Experience optimizing Databricks performance and cost
Experience working with globally distributed teams
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 disability-accomodations@qualcomm.com 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 : $133,600.00 - $200,400.00
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 .