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Senior/Staff Linux Kernel Engineer

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Senior/Staff Linux Kernel Engineer in USA

  • Zipline
  • Full time
  • Email
  • South San Francisco, CA

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.

Salary: $17k - $230k/yr

Zipline

Zipline is redefining logistics with its instant delivery system that addresses urgent access challenges for a diverse range of customers, including governments and businesses. By leveraging advanced technology like robotics and autonomy, Zipline ensures equitable access to essential goods, wheth...

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