Senior Software Engineer - Linux Kernel Development
Senior Software Engineer on Akamai's Linux Infrastructure team, building and maintaining Akamai's custom Linux kernel/distribution that underpins its cloud platform — porting patches to newer kernels, debugging production issues, improving build/test automation, and upstreaming work to the open source community. Core stack: C, Linux kernel internals, and Python/Perl/Shell scripting.
- Compensation
- $121.4K–$218.6K / yr
- Location
- United States
- Work setup
- Remote
- Seniority
- Senior
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 3+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 5 years of relevant experience and a Bachelor's degree or its equivalent
- 3+ years of software development experience in C with a focus on Linux kernel development
- Scripting experience (Perl/Python/Shell)
- Solid understanding of Linux kernel internals and experience with Linux kernel debugging
- Familiarity with at least two of: memory management, filesystems, block IO, TCP/IP stack, KVM
- Working knowledge of concurrent programming, data structures, algorithms, complexity analysis, and network protocols (TCP/UDP/IP, Ethernet, QUIC, HTTP/TLS)
- Motivated self-starter who enjoys collaborating with others but capable of working independently
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Full description
Are you passionate about the Linux kernel?Want to enable and secure the foundation of Akamai Cloud Platform?Join our Cloud Platform Infrastructure Group - Linux Infrastructure team
Our team is part of Cloud Platform Infrastructure Group, developing distributed systems that support Akamai's large global network. At the core of Akamai infrastructure, we work on complex and exciting systems that are available 24/7. Critical to Akamai, our Linux Infrastructure team develops, maintains, and ensures reliability, security, and performance of a custom Linux distribution with Akamai-specific extensions and settings.
Build the future through innovation and automation
You will be an integral part of a multi-faceted globally-distributed development team that builds, maintains, and improves Akamai's custom Linux kernel.
As a Senior Software Engineer, you will be responsible for:
- Developing new features to improve performance, reliability, and security of Akamai Cloud Platform
- Porting existing Akamai modifications to newer versions of Linux kernel
- Debugging and fixing issues found in a variety of complex test and production environments
- Enhancing existing build and test automation to facilitate Continuous Testing
- Collaborating closely with platform and application developer and test teams as well as Akamai hardware development teams
- Working with the open source community to upstream your work
- Staying current with upstream Linux kernel and OS changes and emerging industry trends
Do what you love
To be successful in this role you will:
- Have 5 years of relevant experience and a Bachelor's degree or its equivalent
- Have 3+ years of experience in software development in C with a focus on Linux kernel development and also scripting (Perl/Python/Shell)
- Have a solid understanding of Linux kernel internals and experience with Linux kernel debugging
- Be familiar with at least two of the following subsystems required: memory management, filesystems, block IO, TCP/IP stack, KVM)
- Have a good working knowledge of concurrent programming, data structures, algorithms, complexity analysis, and network protocols (TCP/UDP/IP, Ethernet, QUIC, HTTP/TLS)
- Be a motivated self-starter who enjoys collaborating with others but capable of working independently
- Possess excellent verbal and written communication skills
About us
At Akamai, we make life better for billions of people, trillions of times a day.
Whether you're streaming live events, scrolling social media, watching your favorite series, or managing your savings, we're the engine behind the scenes. We provide the world's most distributed platform from Cloud to Edge to help the giants of the digital world work faster and stay more secure, making the internet a better experience for everyone.