Linux Kernel Engineer - Ubuntu

Canonical

Canonical is a leading provider of open source software and operating systems to the global enterprise and technology markets. Our platform, Ubuntu, is very widely used in breakthrough enterprise initiatives such as public cloud, data science, AI, engineering innovation, and IoT. Our customers include the worlds leading public cloud and silicon providers, and industry leaders in many sectors. The company is a pioneer of global distributed collaboration, with 1200+ colleagues in 75+ countries and very few office-based roles. Teams meet two to four times yearly in person, in interesting locations around the world, to align on strategy and execution.

The company is founder-led, profitable, and growing.

Canonical has a large and rapidly growing kernel team that underpins Ubuntu and open source more widely across a very wide range of hardware and use cases. We partner with the biggest kernel contributors - the silicon companies - to ensure that their work reaches the widest possible audience as quickly as possible, with a 10 year enterprise security commitment.

The Canonical Linux Kernel Organization has teams in every time zone. We have opportunities for technical leadership, engineering management, and engineering directorships. The team is responsible for all supported Ubuntu Linux kernels, on all platforms and architectures from small embedded devices to standard desktop/server systems to large scale cloud environments, mainframes and supercomputers.

We care most about hardware and virtualization enablement, security, reliability and performance. There are a number of areas where we lead upstream, but for the most part we are interested in ensuring production readiness and performance for the latest patch-sets, rather than subsystem maintenance or evolution.

Kernel Team projects include but are not limited to:

• Ubuntu Linux kernel plan, execution, benchmarking and stress testing
• Optimized kernels for key silicon and cloud partners
• Confidential computing and next-generation security primitives
• Developer platforms such as Raspberry Pi and RISC-V
• Enabling Ubuntu on a wide range of embedded systems
• Kernel Livepatch, which delivers critical kernel fixes without rebooting
• FIPS compliance
• Real-Time and Low Latency kernel variants and patch-sets
• Virtualization or abstraction engines
• Container technology
• Security with AppArmor, SECCOMP, namespaces and more
• Networking - in particular performance and security
• Storage - we are particularly interested in Ceph and DRBD
  
  

We hire candidates of all experience levels from recent university graduates through seasoned industry experts. We select those who are enthusiastic to work in multiple areas including security mitigation, feature development, patching and test. You must have outstanding academic results, a background in software engineering, be motivated to work in a distributed team and willing to travel globally twice a year for company engineering events.

Location: Working from home, worldwide. We have kernel teams and openings in every time zone and with the notable exception of Taipei, Taiwan have no offices and therefore no pressure to work from an office.

What the role entails

• Collaborate regularly and proactively with a globally distributed team
• Work closely with external silicon, cloud, or hardware manufacturer delivery teams on bleeding-edge platforms
• Diagnose and resolve issues in the kernel reported by customers, the community, and discovered by your own rigorous testing
• Take personal responsibility for the delivery of a flavour of the Ubuntu Linux kernel
• Improve tooling and automation for delivery and test of Ubuntu Linux kernels
• Submit, review, and apply kernel patches, working with both internal and external upstream maintainers
  
  

What we are looking for in you

• Significant programming experience in C, with Python, Golang, or other like languages is also highly regarded
• Experience with operating system kernel internals and concepts, Linux would be highly regarded but not essential
• Solid background with git
• Experience with Linux (Debian or Ubuntu preferred)
• Professional written and spoken English with excellent presentation skills
• Ability to travel twice a year, for company events up to two weeks each
  
  

Nice-to-have skills

• Strong grasp of device drivers, BSPs, and other low level system engineering
• Prior experience developing with software packaging formats, with direct Ubuntu/Debian/Snap experience being highly regarded
• Understanding of Linux kernel upstream processes and release cycle
• Performance engineering and security experience
• Solid background in CI/CD and process automation
• Prior public involvement with an open source project