A stream processing execution engine evaluates development-time performance characteristic estimates in combination with run-time parameters to schedule execution of stream processing software components in a stack of a stream processing application that satisfy a defined performance criterion in a heterogeneous hardware device. A stream processing application includes a stack of interdependent stream processing software components. A stream processing execution engine evaluates one or more performance characteristics of multiple computational resources in the heterogeneous hardware device. Each performance characteristic is associated with performance of a computational resource in executing a computational-resource-dependent instance of a stream processing software component. The stream processing execution engine schedules within the run-time environment a computational resource on which to execute a computational-resource-dependent instance of one of the stream processing software components. The computational-resource-dependent instance is targeted for execution on the computational resource that satisfies a performance policy attributed to the stream processing software component.