Senior Kernel / Systems Software Engineer

Senior Kernel / Systems Software Engineer

Role: Senior Kernel / Systems Software Engineer

Location: Pune

Experience: 5 to 10 years

About the Role

We are seeking a seasoned Senior Kernel / Systems Software Engineer with 5-10 years of hands-on experience in low-level systems programming. In this role, you will design, architect, and optimize core operating system components, kernel-mode drivers, and system-level

software. You will tackle complex challenges related to OS internals, hardware abstraction, and high-performance concurrency.

Whether working on Windows or Linux environments, you will be responsible for ensuring ultra-low latency, maximum stability, and tight resource utilization across multi-threaded and multi-processor systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Design & Architecture: Lead the design, implementation, and maintenance of high-performance kernel modules, system services, and device drivers.
• OS Internals & Performance: Optimize core system components for latency, memory footprint, CPU utilization, and overall system throughput.
• Low-Level Debugging: Troubleshoot complex low-level issues, including kernel panics/bug checks, memory corruption, deadlocks, race conditions, and hardware-software interaction faults.
• System Security & Stability: Enforce secure coding practices in ring 0 / privilege mode environments to prevent vulnerability exploits and system crashes.
• Technical Leadership: Participate in architectural reviews, establish coding standards, mentor junior engineers, and drive technical decision-making across teams.
• AI-Assisted Workflows: Leverage AI coding assistants and LLM tools to accelerate code generation, prototyping, and test scenario creation while maintaining rigorous manual verification.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with QA, Hardware, and DevOps teams to streamline driver/module deployment, automated testing, and CI/CD pipelines.

Required Qualifications & Skills

• Education: Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electronics, or a related technical field.
• Core Systems Experience: 510 years of deep systems programming experience in C and C++ within low-level software environments.
• OS Internals Expertise: Advanced, practical understanding of operating system concepts, including privilege levels (User Mode vs. Kernel Mode), Virtual Memory Management, Interrupt Handling, DMA, Synchronization Primitives, and Multithreading/Concurrency models.
• OS Agnostic / Cross-Platform Exposure: Deep familiarity with OS API layers and kernel paradigms on Linux (POSIX, Syscalls) or Windows (Win32, Native API, WDF/KMDF), with the adaptability to work across both platforms.
• Advanced Debugging: Proven experience using kernel-level debuggers and profiling tools (e.g., WinDbg, GDB, Valgrind, Trace32, Perf, or OS-native crash dump analysis tools).
• Hardware Interfacing: Experience interfacing software directly with underlying hardware architecture (x86/x64, ARM, PCIe, Bus interfaces).
• Build & Version Control: Proficiency with Git, complex build systems (CMake, Makefiles, MSBuild), and CI/CD integration.
• AI Tool Integration:

Hands-on experience using AI assistants (e.g., GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude) to optimize workflows.

Strong capability to craft precise technical prompts and validate/fact-check AI-generated code for edge cases, security risks, and AI hallucinations.

• Soft Skills: Excellent problem-solving skills, strong architectural thinking, and the ability to articulate complex technical concepts clearly to cross-functional stakeholders.

Preferred Skills (Good to Have)

• Direct experience writing and certifying kernel-mode device drivers (e.g., Windows Driver Frameworks [KMDF/UMDF] or Linux Kernel Modules [LKM]).
• Experience with hypervisors, virtualization technologies (KVM, Hyper-V, Xen), or container runtimes.
• Knowledge of high-speed networking stack internals (TCP/IP, DPDK, RDMA) or storage stacks (NVMe, SCSI).
• Proficiency in scripting languages (Python, PowerShell, Bash) for test automation and build tooling.
• Experience with static code analysis, thread sanitizers, and zero-trust memory safety standards.