Senior Systems Engineer, CKS Performance

What You'll Do:

The Systems Engineering team owns the Linux kernel and host software stack underneath one of the largest GPU fleets in the world. When something breaks at the Kubernetes layer — a pod stuck in a mystery state, a cgroup that won't reclaim memory, a scheduler decision that makes no sense — the root cause almost always lives below the abstraction, in the kernel. Our team is the last line of defense: we go down into memory management, scheduling, and namespaces to find out what's actually happening, fix it, and often upstream the fix.

About the role:

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Systems Engineering team, you will be the kernel expert who traces complex, ambiguous failures in Kubernetes, pods, and containers back to their root cause in the Linux kernel — and fixes them there. You'll live at the boundary between kernel internals (cgroups, namespaces, the scheduler, memory management) and the container/orchestration stack built on top of them (containerd, runc, the kubelet, the CRI). Day-to-day, you'll debug kernel crashes and panics, chase down cgroup and namespace edge cases that only show up at fleet scale, and work with hardware, platform, and product teams to turn "the pod is doing something impossible" into a root cause and a patch — upstreaming it when it belongs in the broader Linux and Kubernetes ecosystems.

Some of what you'll work on:

• Debug and fix complex issues that span the kernel/Kubernetes boundary — pods stuck or evicted for unclear reasons, cgroup memory/CPU accounting that doesn't add up, namespace or mount issues that only manifest under real workloads at scale.
• Go deep into cgroups (v1 and v2), namespaces, the OOM killer, and the CPU scheduler (CFS) to explain and fix behavior that looks like a Kubernetes bug but is actually a kernel one — and the reverse.
• Debug kernel crashes, panics, oopses, and hangs using tools like crash, gdb, and kdump; identify root cause and drive it to a fix.
• Work across the container runtime stack (containerd, runc, the kubelet, the CRI) to understand how kernel behavior surfaces as pod- and container-level symptoms.
• Develop and, where applicable, upstream Linux kernel patches — to the mainline kernel, container runtimes, or Kubernetes itself.
• Build diagnostics and tooling for kernel- and cgroup-level observability, so the next issue like this is faster to find.
• Partner with hardware, platform, HPC, and Fleet teams to ensure kernel and container-runtime readiness for production workloads, and provide kernel-level expertise during incident response and root-cause investigations.

Who You Are:

• 5+ years of professional experience in Linux kernel engineering, systems-level development, or a closely adjacent discipline.
• Deep understanding of kernel internals — memory management, process/thread scheduling, cgroups, namespaces, and the networking or storage stack.
• Hands-on experience with cgroups (v1 and/or v2) and namespaces, and how they underpin container isolation and resource limits.
• Experience debugging kernel crashes, panics, hangs, and dumps using tools like crash, gdb, or kdump.
• Strong C programming skills, with the ability to write maintainable, upstream-quality code.
• Working knowledge of the container and Kubernetes stack — containerd, runc, the kubelet, and the CRI — and how kernel behavior shows up at that layer.
• Skilled at cross-domain debugging: identifying whether a root cause lies in the kernel, the container runtime, or the orchestration layer above it.

Preferred:

• Experience upstreaming patches to the Linux kernel, containerd, runc, or Kubernetes.
• Familiarity with eBPF for kernel-level tracing, observability, or enforcement.
• Experience with kernel networking (TCP/IP, RDMA/RoCE) or storage subsystems at scale.
• Experience debugging GPU/DPU driver or hardware-enablement issues at the kernel level.
• Background in HPC or large-scale distributed systems.
• Contributions to the Linux kernel, containerd, runc, or Kubernetes projects.

The base salary range for this role is $182,000 to $242,000. The starting salary will be determined based on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and market location. We strive for both market alignment and internal equity when determining compensation. In addition to base salary, our total rewards package includes a discretionary bonus, equity awards, and a comprehensive benefits program (all based on eligibility).