Senior/Staff Linux Kernel Engineer

Responsibilities

• Diagnose crashes, hangs, races, driver failures, and performance or timing issues across the deployed fleet.
• Develop, debug, maintain, and own Linux kernel drivers and related subsystems.
• Bring up new hardware, including device-tree configuration, firmware interfaces, and board-support software.
• Design and verify fault detection, containment, recovery, watchdog, and graceful-degradation behavior on real hardware.
• Build diagnostics, benchmarks, automated tests, and validation systems that detect regressions before release.
• Improve latency, throughput, CPU and memory utilization, and networking performance.
• Review kernel and driver changes, maintain the patch stack across kernel upgrades, and contribute patches upstream.
• Lead cross-team technical decisions, write design documents, mentor engineers, and set kernel and platform direction at the Staff level.

Requirements

• 7+ years of professional Linux kernel experience, including end-to-end ownership of a driver, subsystem, or hardware bring-up.
• Strong C skills and deep knowledge of kernel internals, including scheduling, interrupts, concurrency, memory management, DMA, MMIO, and the Linux device model.
• Experience debugging real hardware and using datasheets or interface specifications to identify root causes.
• Fluency with ftrace, perf, dynamic debug, crash analysis, and data-driven fix validation.
• Experience with the upstream kernel patch workflow.
• Experience writing design documents, leading cross-team technical efforts, and mentoring engineers.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills, including explaining complex kernel issues to non-kernel specialists.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Preferred experience includes PCIe, Ethernet/NIC drivers, DMA, IOMMU, MSI/MSI-X, Linux networking, Embedded Linux, ARM64, device trees, board bring-up, real-time systems, PREEMPT_RT, latency analysis, eBPF, XDP, high-performance networking, kernel CI, stress testing, performance regression testing, upstream contributions, product-kernel maintenance, hardware debugging tools, firmware, bootloaders, or test-automation scripting.

Benefits

• Starting cash range is listed as $170,00-$230,000, with final pay depending on experience, qualifications, skills, location, and projected impact.
• Total compensation may include equity, overtime pay, discretionary annual or performance bonuses, sales incentives, medical, dental, and vision insurance, and paid time off.
• The role supports work across hardware, firmware, platform, networking, and flight-software teams on safety-critical autonomous aircraft systems.