Senior/Staff Linux Kernel Engineer

Who you are

• 7+ years of professional Linux kernel work, including ownership of at least one driver, subsystem, or hardware bring-up from start to finish
• Strong C and deep familiarity with kernel internals: scheduling, interrupts, concurrency, memory management, DMA, MMIO, and the Linux device model
• A record of debugging on real hardware and reading datasheets or interface specs to find root causes
• Fluency with kernel debugging and measurement tools such as ftrace, perf, dynamic debug, and crash analysis, and the habit of validating fixes with data
• Comfort with the upstream patch workflow
• Experience writing design docs, leading technical efforts across teams, and mentoring other engineers
• Clear written and verbal communication, including explaining a subtle kernel problem to people who don't work in the kernel
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• PCIe, Ethernet/NIC drivers, DMA, IOMMU, MSI/MSI-X, or Linux networking
• Embedded Linux, ARM64, device tree, or board bring-up
• Real-time systems, PREEMPT_RT, or latency analysis
• EBPF, XDP, or high-performance networking
• Kernel CI, stress testing, or performance regression testing
• Upstream kernel contributions, or maintaining a product kernel
• Hardware debugging tools, firmware, bootloaders, or test automation scripting

What the job involves

• We're looking for an experienced Linux kernel engineer to own and solve hard problems across hardware, firmware, kernel, and userspace on our embedded flight computers
• You will set the technical direction for the kernel and platform work, as well as bring up new hardware, develop and maintain kernel drivers, and debug system-level issues, and shape how we build and validate kernel software as the platform scales to millions of deliveries every single day
• As a Senior or Staff Linux kernel engineer at Zipline, you will be responsible for stability and performance of the Linux kernel, which is the foundation of our flight computers
• The kernel operates as a safety-critical software layer that will enable our aircraft to safely make millions of deliveries a day
• You'll own the kernel drivers, hardware bring-up, and system-level debugging that the rest of the flight software stack depends on
• You will work closely with hardware, firmware, platform, networking, and flight software teams, from the first boot of a new board to diagnosing rare failures across a deployed fleet
• You'll help define what "ready to ship" means and build the validation that backs it up
• You will also help build reusable kernel tooling, diagnostics, and automated tests that level up our systems' observability and reliability
• At the Staff level, you will set the technical direction for kernel and platform work, not just execute it
• Diagnose crashes, hangs, races, driver failures, and performance or timing problems across a deployed fleet using crash dumps, kernel traces, logs, and telemetry, and turn rare field failures into reproducible tests
• Drive ambiguous, cross-system issues from investigation to validated resolution, then invest in tooling, testing, and architecture so they don't come back
• Develop, debug, and maintain Linux kernel drivers and related subsystems, and own them end to end
• Design for failure: define how the kernel and drivers detect, contain, and recover from faults (watchdogs, error handling paths, graceful degradation), and verify that behavior on real hardware
• Bring up new hardware, including device tree configuration, firmware interfaces, and board-support software
• Build diagnostics, benchmarks, and automated tests that catch regressions before they ship
• Measure and improve latency, throughput, CPU and memory use, and networking performance
• Serve as a technical reviewer for kernel and driver changes, and maintain our patch stack across kernel upgrades
• Write and review design docs, and drive cross-team technical decisions to consensus with hardware, firmware, platform, networking, and flight software teams
• Mentor engineers and raise the team's bar for code quality, debugging practice, and testing
• Contribute patches upstream and track upstream regressions that affect us