Principal Engineer (Linux Kernel Performance)

Join a globally recognized technology research organization seeking an experienced Principal Linux Kernel Performance Engineer to help shape the next generation of high-performance computing and mobile platforms.

This is an opportunity to work at the intersection of operating systems, CPU architecture, power efficiency, and AI-driven optimization. You will play a pivotal role in improving system responsiveness, throughput, and energy efficiency by driving low-level kernel enhancements that directly impact millions of users worldwide.

What You'll Be Doing

As a senior technical leader, you will investigate, design, and implement advanced kernel-level optimizations across critical operating system components, taking innovations from analysis through benchmarking and production deployment.

Key areas of focus include:

• Enhancing memory subsystem efficiency, including allocation strategies, reclaim mechanisms, memory compaction, page management, and large-page optimizations.
• Improving scheduler behavior for modern heterogeneous CPU architectures, optimizing workload placement, latency, load balancing, and energy-aware execution.
• Driving performance improvements across synchronization mechanisms, reducing contention and increasing scalability in highly parallel environments.
• Analyzing and refining inter-process communication, system call execution paths, interrupt handling, and context-switch overhead.
• Profiling real-world workloads such as gaming, multimedia, AI inference, and interactive user experiences to identify performance and power bottlenecks.
• Leveraging advanced observability and profiling tools including perf, eBPF, PMU analysis, ftrace, and other kernel tracing technologies.
• Delivering production-ready kernel improvements backed by rigorous benchmarking and measurable gains in performance and energy consumption.
• Collaborating closely with hardware architects to influence future processor designs through software-driven insights and co-optimization initiatives.
• Contributing to next-generation automated performance engineering workflows, including AI-assisted analysis, tuning, and validation frameworks.

What We're Looking For

Essential Experience

• Extensive experience developing operating system kernels in C, ideally within Linux-based environments.
• Strong track record of delivering kernel enhancements into production systems at scale.
• Deep expertise in memory management, including allocation, paging, reclamation, compaction, virtual memory, and TLB-related behaviour.
• Advanced knowledge of Linux scheduling internals, task management, preemption, and energy-aware scheduling techniques.
• Expert understanding of kernel concurrency, synchronization primitives, memory ordering, and ARM64 architecture fundamentals.
• Hands-on experience with low-level performance investigation and optimization using modern tracing and profiling tools.
• Strong understanding of processor architecture, cache hierarchies, memory systems, and hardware/software interactions.
• Mobile platform performance and power optimization.
• Contributions to upstream Linux kernel projects.
• Experience working with Android-derived or mobile operating systems.
• Familiarity with CPU modelling, simulation environments, or microarchitectural analysis.
• Exposure to machine learning or AI-assisted approaches for systems optimization.

Why Join?

• Work on technically challenging problems that sit at the core of modern computing platforms.
• Influence products and technologies deployed on a global scale.
• Collaborate with world-class engineers across operating systems, processor architecture, and AI research.
• Gain exposure to cutting-edge hardware/software co-design initiatives.
• Enjoy the freedom to drive innovation, publish ideas, and shape future platform directions.
• Be part of a highly research-driven engineering environment where deep technical expertise is valued and encouraged.

This position offers the chance to solve some of the industry's most complex performance and efficiency challenges while working alongside leading experts in systems software and computer architecture.

If you are motivated by solving complex kernel and system performance challenges, and your background aligns with the skills and experience outlined above, we would be delighted to hear from you. Apply now or email nk@eu-recruit.com for a confidential conversation.

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