Senior Director, EDA & HPC Engineering Platforms at Qualcomm, San Diego, CA

Senior Director, EDA & HPC Engineering Platforms at Qualcomm in San Diego, CA. Contract. Est. $300k or more. Apply with swipeandhired.

Company:
Qualcomm Incorporated
Job Area:
Information Technology Group, Information Technology Group > IT Management
General Summary:
About the Role
We are seeking a strategic, hands-on Senior Director of EDA & HPC Engineering Platforms to lead the vision, architecture, and global operations of the compute, data, and development infrastructure behind our silicon and systems engineering.

This leader will own an end-to-end portfolio spanning HPC grids and intelligent scheduling, EDA license orchestration, source code and design data management (SCM), Linux/Unix and container platforms, observability, analytics and data engineering, and engineering IP protection . You will define a multi-year modernization roadmap across on-premises data centers and hybrid cloud, set enterprise technical standards, and build a high-performing organization that design and CAD teams see as a true engineering partner.
This is a senior leadership role with significant influence on engineering productivity, tape-out schedules, infrastructure investment, and the security of our most valuable intellectual property.

**Position Requires to be in San Diego, in office 5 days a week

Minimum Qualifications:

• 10+ years of IT-related work experience with a Bachelor's degree.

OR
12+ years of IT-related work experience without a Bachelor’s degree.

• 7+ years of supervisory or leadership experience.
• 3+ years of work experience in a role requiring interaction with senior leadership (e.g., VP level and above).

*Completed advanced degrees in a relevant field may be substituted for up to two years (Master’s = one year, Doctorate = two years) of the general IT-related work experience.

What You Will Do

Strategy & Organizational Leadership

• Define and own the multi-year strategy, target-state architecture, and investment roadmap for EDA/HPC platforms, aligned with engineering program milestones and business priorities.

• Lead a global organization of Directors, Managers, Architects, and SREs; build succession plans, career frameworks, and a culture of operational excellence, ownership, and continuous improvement.

• Serve as the executive point of contact for EDA/HPC infrastructure with engineering leadership, CAD, Security, Legal, Finance, Procurement, and Facilities.

• Govern architecture through Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), design reviews, and technical standards across all platform domains.

• Own the annual operating plan, budget, and capacity investments; present business cases, ROI, and TCO analysis to executive leadership.

HPC Grid & Intelligent Scheduling

• Define the target state for multi-scheduler operations (IBM LSF, Altair PBS Pro/Accelerator, Slurm), including queue design, fairshare models, preemption, reservations, and resource guardrails.

• Lead scheduler modernization, consolidation, and migration programs using dual-run strategies that minimize disruption to active design programs.

• Deliver job submission APIs, workflow and pipeline orchestration, interactive and session scheduling, and self-service capabilities for engineering users.

• Ensure high availability, disaster recovery, and performance at scale across global data centers.

• Drive heterogeneous compute strategy (CPU architectures, high-memory nodes, GPU/accelerators) aligned with EDA workload profiles.

EDA License Orchestration

• Own license management strategy across major EDA vendors (Synopsys, Cadence, Siemens EDA, Ansys, and others), including FlexLM/FlexNet, RLM, and license server infrastructure.

• Integrate license-aware scheduling, rusage governance, and policy controls to reduce denials, improve throughput and fairness, and simplify cross-cluster feature management.

• Deliver license utilization analytics that inform vendor negotiations, renewals, and true-up decisions, in partnership with Procurement and Finance.

Source Code & Design Data Management (SCM)

• Own the strategy, architecture, and operations for enterprise SCM and design data management platforms, including Git/GitHub Enterprise, GitLab, Bitbucket, Perforce Helix Core, Dassault DesignSync, IBM ClearCase, Subversion (SVN) , and related systems.

• Define a forward-looking SCM roadmap, including rationalization of legacy platforms (e.g., ClearCase, SVN) and migration strategies that preserve history, traceability, and IP integrity.

• Establish standards for branching, workspace management, large-file and binary handling, replication across global sites, and performance for large design repositories.

• Integrate SCM with CI/CD pipelines, regression systems, artifact repositories (JFrog Artifactory, Nexus), and code review and quality tools.

• Ensure SCM platforms meet requirements for high availability, backup and recovery, access control, and audit.

• Partner with CAD and methodology teams on design data management for hardware workflows (RTL, verification, physical design, analog/mixed-signal).

Linux/Unix, Compute & Container Platforms

• Own the enterprise Linux/Unix engineering platform (RHEL, Rocky Linux, SUSE, and legacy Unix as needed), including OS lifecycle, hardening, patching, and EDA tool compatibility certification.

• Drive infrastructure-as-code and configuration management at scale (Ansible, Terraform, Puppet/Salt) with automated, repeatable, and auditable provisioning.

• Lead container adoption for HPC and engineering workloads (Apptainer/Singularity, Docker, Podman) and orchestration platforms (Kubernetes, OpenShift) where appropriate.

• Define standards for golden images, tool packaging, environment modules, and reproducible engineering environments across on-premises and cloud.

• Partner with storage and infrastructure teams on high-performance storage (NetApp, Weka, IBM Storage Scale/GPFS, Lustre, VAST, or similar), data tiering, and I/O performance for EDA workloads.

Analytics & Data Engineering

• Build and lead an analytics and data engineering function that turns platform telemetry into decision systems for engineering and executive stakeholders.

• Architect scalable data pipelines and platforms (e.g., Kafka, Spark, Airflow, ClickHouse, Snowflake, Databricks, or similar) that ingest scheduler, license, storage, SCM, and infrastructure data.

• Productize dashboards and self-service analytics (Tableau, Power BI, Grafana, or similar) covering utilization, job wait times, license efficiency, storage growth, cost allocation, and engineering productivity.

• Deliver capacity planning and forecasting models, including predictive and ML-driven approaches, tied to program schedules and tape-out demand.

• Establish data governance, quality standards, data catalogs, and chargeback/showback models.

• Explore AI/ML opportunities for intelligent scheduling, anomaly detection, failure prediction, and workload optimization.

Telemetry, Observability & Reliability

• Build a converged observability stack for metrics, logs, and traces (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/OpenSearch, Splunk, or commercial APM).

• Define SLIs and SLOs for critical engineering services, with high-signal alerting, canaries, runbooks, and error budgets.

• Implement auto-remediation and self-healing capabilities such as job throttling, host quarantine, intelligent routing, and automated failover.

• Lead incident management, post-incident reviews, problem management, and a predictable change and release cadence.

Engineering IP Protection & Access Control

• Lead engineering IP classification and least-privilege access models across compute, storage, SCM, and collaboration platforms.

• Implement secure enclaves and containment for sensitive programs, third-party IP, customer and partner collaboration, and export-controlled data.

• Build monitoring, audit, and data loss prevention pipelines that prevent IP contamination while enabling productive collaboration.

• Partner with Information Security, Legal, and Compliance on regulatory, contractual, and export control requirements (e.g., ITAR/EAR where applicable).

• Integrate identity and access management (LDAP/Active Directory, SSO, RBAC/ABAC, privileged access management) across platforms.

Hybrid & Cloud HPC

• Define the hybrid HPC strategy and reference architectures for cloud burst and cloud-native EDA execution (AWS, Azure, GCP).

• Establish patterns for images and tooling, data locality and transfer, object storage, license connectivity, security, and cost/performance visibility.

• Lead FinOps practices for cloud spend governance, and graduate pilots to production safely and economically.

Vendor & Partner Management

• Own strategic relationships with EDA vendors, hardware OEMs, scheduler and SCM vendors, storage providers, and cloud partners.

• Lead contract negotiations, renewals, and vendor performance governance in partnership with Procurement.

What Success Looks Like (First 12–18 Months)

• A published multi-year EDA/HPC platform strategy and target-state architecture endorsed by engineering and IT leadership.

• Measurable improvements in job wait times, grid utilization, and license denial rates.

• An SCM rationalization roadmap with at least one legacy platform migration underway or completed.

• A production analytics platform delivering trusted, self-service insights on utilization, cost, and capacity.

• Defined SLOs for critical services, with improved availability and reduced mean time to recovery.

• A strengthened IP protection posture with documented classification, enclave patterns, and audit coverage.

• A production-grade hybrid cloud HPC capability with clear cost and performance governance.

• A stable, engaged, and growing leadership team with clear roles and succession plans.

What You Will Bring

• 15+ years of progressive experience in HPC, EDA infrastructure, or engineering IT, including 8+ years leading multi-level organizations (managers of managers).

• Deep expertise operating mission-critical, large-scale compute grids running multi-vendor EDA flows in semiconductor, systems, or similar engineering environments.

• Mastery of scheduler design and operations ( IBM LSF required ; Altair PBS/Accelerator and Slurm strongly preferred), including queue and fairshare policy, wrappers and pre-execs, and migration/dual-run strategies.

• Strong experience with EDA license management (FlexNet/FlexLM, RLM) and license-aware scheduling.

• Hands-on leadership of enterprise SCM platforms, including Git/GitHub, Perforce, and DesignSync , with experience in ClearCase or other legacy system migrations.

• Strong foundation in Linux/Unix systems engineering at scale, configuration management, and infrastructure-as-code.

• Proven experience with containers and orchestration (Apptainer/Singularity, Docker, Kubernetes) in HPC or engineering environments.

• Demonstrated leadership of analytics and data engineering initiatives, including data pipelines, analytics databases (e.g., ClickHouse, Snowflake), and BI tools (e.g., Tableau, Power BI).

• Proven observability leadership (SLIs/SLOs, alert fidelity, runbooks, self-healing) with hands-on experience in Prometheus/Grafana and/or enterprise APM.

• Strong background in engineering IP protection, including classification, RBAC/DRM, secure enclaves, monitoring, and audits, working closely with Security and Legal.

• Track record of owning large budgets, building business cases, and leading vendor and contract governance.

• Exceptional executive communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical topics into business outcomes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading hybrid or cloud HPC for EDA workloads on AWS, Azure, or GCP, including FinOps practices.

• Experience with high-performance storage platforms (NetApp, Weka, GPFS/Storage Scale, Lustre, VAST).

• Familiarity with CI/CD and DevOps tooling (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Artifactory).

• Experience applying AI/ML to scheduling, capacity forecasting, or operational analytics.

• Experience supporting export-controlled or regulated engineering programs.

• Scripting and automation proficiency (Python, Bash, Perl, Tcl).

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer/Electrical Engineering, or a related field; Master's degree preferred.

Leadership Competencies

• Strategic Vision: Sets a clear, compelling direction and aligns teams and stakeholders behind it.

• Technical Credibility: Earns the respect of senior engineers and architects and is comfortable going deep when needed.

• Operational Excellence: Runs a disciplined, metrics-driven organization with predictable execution.

• Customer Partnership: Treats design and CAD teams as customers and measures success by their productivity.

• Talent Builder: Attracts, develops, and retains top technical talent and builds strong leadership benches.

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