About this role
## Company:
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
## Job Area:
Engineering Group, Engineering Group > Machine Learning Researcher
General Summary:
Qualcomm AI Research is seeking world-class researchers to help push the boundaries of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Our team pioneers new algorithms, models, and systems that advance the state of the art while delivering exceptional performance with unprecedented power, memory, and computational efficiency.
Our multidisciplinary team brings together expertise across algorithms, software, hardware, and systems. We pursue fundamental and applied research, from foundational theories and novel learning algorithms to efficient AI systems deployed on resource-constrained devices. Working closely with Qualcomm's business and engineering teams, we translate research breakthroughs into technologies deployed worldwide across mobile, compute, automotive, robotics, cloud, XR, and IoT platforms, while publishing at leading AI conferences.
Our team has demonstrated world-first research breakthroughs and proof-of-concepts across model efficiency, representation learning, perception and understanding, generative and foundation models, reasoning and agentic intelligence, and embodied and physical AI. Our research contributions have earned numerous best paper awards, major research competition wins, and top rankings on AI and computer vision benchmarks. We also translate these breakthroughs into highly optimized AI models, end-to-end workflows, and developer tools for Qualcomm platforms, making many innovations accessible to all. Explore our research and innovations:
- Research Breakthroughs and Demonstrations (https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2023/11/accelerating-generative-ai-at-the-edge)
- Qualcomm AI Research Publications and Innovations (https://www.qualcomm.com/ai-research)
- Qualcomm AI Hub: Optimized Models and Workflows (https://aihub.qualcomm.com/)
Role Responsibilities:
Research interns will contribute to fundamental and applied research in artificial intelligence and machine learning, developing novel algorithms, models, and systems that advance the state of the art. Research opportunities span a broad range of areas, including:
- Generative AI and Foundation Models: Large language models (LLMs), multimodal foundation models, vision-language models (VLMs), vision-language-action models (VLAs), world models, and generative modeling for language, image, video, audio, and 3D content. Research topics include diffusion and autoregressive models, mixture-of-experts, parallel decoding, long-context modeling, and knowledge distillation.
- Agentic AI and Reasoning: Autonomous agents, multi-agent systems, reasoning, planning, and verification; memory management, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), inference-time optimization, robustness, alignment, AI safety, and hallucination mitigation.
- Efficient and Scalable AI: Novel neural architectures, efficient attention mechanisms, transformers, state-space models, and recurrent networks; model compression, pruning, quantization, neural architecture search, parameter-efficient fine-tuning, and efficient training and inference. Research also includes on-device AI, edge-cloud learning, distributed training, hardware-aware optimization, and compiler and kernel optimizations.
- Learning, Perception, and Embodied AI: Self-supervised, reinforcement, imitation, contrastive, and continual learning; few-shot learning, personalization, domain adaptation, and uncertainty estimation. Applications include computer vision, 3D perception, neural rendering, speech AI, autonomous driving, robotics, embodied intelligence, and human-AI interfaces.
Depending on the research project, internship responsibilities may include:
- Conducting original research, developing novel machine learning algorithms and architectures, and designing, training, and evaluating AI models to advance the state of the art.
- Developing efficient AI systems and software frameworks, including optimization for mobile, edge, and cloud platforms.
- Exploring emerging computing paradigms, including hardware-software co-design, compute-in-memory, and distributed or federated learning.
- Collaborating with researchers and engineers to prototype, validate, and communicate research findings, with opportunities to contribute to scientific publications and technology transfer.
Minimum Qualifications:
• Master's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field and 4+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience.
OR
PhD in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field and 2+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience.
• 6+ months of experience developing and/or optimizing machine learning models, systems, platforms, or methods.
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 [email protected] 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 :
$178,200.00 - $267,400.00
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 .