Qualcomm Engineering Intern (HW/SW) — Hyderabad / Bangalore / Chennai 2026

About the role

Qualcomm runs Summer (3-month), 6-month and 11-month engineering internships starting May 2026 across Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai — covering hardware design, systems engineering and software for 5G, 6G and the broader wireless / mobile silicon stack.

Qualcomm India runs one of the most distinctive technical internship programmes in the country because the work is genuinely silicon-adjacent: interns are placed onto teams that ship the chipsets that go into Snapdragon-powered smartphones, the modem stacks that power 5G and the upcoming 6G handsets, the automotive cockpit silicon, and the IoT / wearable platforms that increasingly run Qualcomm RFFE and Wi-Fi modules. This is in contrast to the cloud and SaaS focus of Salesforce, IBM and Google's Indian internships — Qualcomm interns work on problems that exist below the operating-system layer, in C, C++, SystemVerilog and the various proprietary tooling that shapes the modern wireless world.

The 2026 internship cycle is open across three formats. The Summer track is a 3-month internship from May to July 2026 for pre-final-year B.Tech and M.Tech students, with a stipend in the INR 50,000 to 70,000 per month range. The 6-month track runs January to June 2026 or July to December 2026 for final-year students with a strong PPO pipeline, at INR 40,000 to 60,000 per month. The 11-month track is unique to Qualcomm in the Indian market — final-year students start in mid-2026 and continue through the academic year of their final degree, contributing to a substantial chip development cycle, at the lower stipend band of INR 35,000 to 50,000 per month but with by far the highest PPO conversion rate in the Indian market (Qualcomm publicly states the 11-month track converts above 80%).

The team match happens after the offer based on the candidate's degree (ECE vs CS), prior project work and stated technical interest. The hardware track works on RTL design (SystemVerilog), physical design and verification at the Bangalore and Hyderabad design centres. The systems track works on modem stacks (5G NR Layer 1, Layer 2, Layer 3), RF front-end firmware, power management firmware and the various proprietary tooling that ships with a modern Snapdragon SoC. The software track works on the Linux kernel modifications that ship with Qualcomm reference designs, the Android HAL layer for camera and audio subsystems, and the multimedia codecs that the company ships across its product portfolio.

The technical bar is meaningful and genuinely different from the algorithmic-coding-heavy product-company loops. The hardware-track interview is about understanding digital design — combinational vs sequential logic, clock domain crossing, basic verification methodology, finite state machines on a whiteboard. The systems-track interview is about C and C++ at the embedded-firmware level — pointer arithmetic, memory layout, the difference between stack and heap, basic signals and interrupts. The software-track interview is closest to the standard product-company loop but with a Linux-kernel emphasis — understanding what 'volatile' means in C, walking through a basic device-driver structure, explaining the boot sequence of a Linux system. Across all three tracks, the loop weights fundamentals over LeetCode performance.

Day-to-day work depends entirely on the team. A typical hardware-track intern might spend the summer writing SystemVerilog for a small RTL block in a modem subsystem, running it through the team's verification flow, and helping debug a coverage hole that the senior engineers have been hunting for weeks. A typical systems-track intern might spend the summer instrumenting a 5G L2 protocol stack to capture a specific over-the-air metric, contributing to the firmware that ships in the Q3 2026 chipset release. A typical software-track intern might spend the summer optimising the camera image-signal-processing pipeline on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 reference platform, contributing to the GA Android driver that ships with the chipset. Every track involves real reading of long technical specs (3GPP standards documents for the modem, IEEE 802.11 for Wi-Fi, MIPI for the camera and display interfaces), and the strongest interns are the ones who become comfortable navigating those specs.

The compensation package on top of the stipend is strong. Qualcomm provides medical insurance for the intern duration covering self plus immediate family, on-campus shuttle transport, subsidised cafeteria meals, the standard Qualcomm campus amenities (gym, library, recreation areas) at the Hyderabad and Bangalore design centres, and a dedicated mentor whose performance review explicitly includes the intern's outcomes. The PPO conversion rate at Qualcomm India sits at 65-80% across the three tracks, with the 11-month track at the top of that range. The new-grad engineer offer is in the INR 16 to 24 lakh total annual range depending on track and degree, which is competitive with the Indian product-company top tier and dramatically above the Indian services firm new-grad band.

Responsibilities

Own a clearly scoped intern project under a senior engineer mentor. Write SystemVerilog (HW track), C/C++ (systems track) or Linux kernel / Android HAL code (SW track) per the team. Read and navigate 3GPP, IEEE or MIPI specs as relevant. Contribute to the team's verification, firmware or driver release. Demo the project at the end-of-internship review.

Requirements & qualifications

Pursuing B.Tech / M.Tech in Electronics & Communication Engineering or Computer Science (ECE strongly preferred for HW/systems tracks; CS for SW track) with 2026 or 2027 graduation. Strong fundamentals in digital logic (HW), C/C++ (systems), or Linux/Android internals (SW). Comfortable reading long technical specifications. One demonstrable college project that you can speak to in depth.

Why this role in 2026

One of the only world-class silicon-adjacent internships in the Indian market. Real chip-development work on Snapdragon, 5G/6G modems, automotive and IoT platforms. PPO conversion 65-80% (11-month track is highest), with new-grad offers at ₹16-24 LPA total comp.

Application tips

Apply via the Qualcomm Careers India portal (link below). Choose the track (HW, systems, SW) deliberately based on degree and interest. Tailor the resume around chip-design or embedded-systems projects — even a college digital-design lab project, an RTL implementation of a small ALU, or a firmware project on an Arduino / STM32 reads better than a generic web-app project for this loop.

Interview preparation

Track-specific. HW: digital logic, FSMs, clock domain crossing. Systems: pointers, memory layout, signals/interrupts in C/C++. SW: Linux kernel internals, device drivers, Android HAL. All tracks: be ready to talk through one college or personal embedded / hardware project in detail.

Career growth

Intern → Engineer (PPO 65-80%, new-grad ₹16-24 LPA) → Senior Engineer (year 2-3) → Staff Engineer (year 5+). Qualcomm alumni are heavily recruited by automotive silicon, AI accelerator and 6G research orgs in India and globally.

Company & benefits

Stipend ₹35-70k/month (track-dependent), medical insurance for self + family, shuttle transport, subsidised cafeteria meals, on-campus gym and recreation, dedicated mentor, and a strong PPO pipeline.