Systems Engineer, Kernel

What You’ll Do:

CoreWeave is seeking a highly skilled and motivated Systems Kernel Engineer to join our HAVOCK Team, reporting into the Manager of Systems Engineering. In this role, you will be a key contributor to the stability, performance, and evolution of CoreWeave’s Linux based infrastructure. As a kernel generalist, you will be responsible for debugging kernel-level issues, analyzing and fixing crashes, panics, dumps, and upstreaming fixes and features that improves the performance and reliability of our stack.

This position is ideal for someone who thrives in low-level systems engineering, and understands how modern workloads stress kernels, and is excited to work across a diverse hardware/software ecosystem including CPUs, GPUs, DPUs, networking, and storage.

Kernel Hardware - Acceleration - Virtualization - Operating Systems - Containerization - Kubelet

Our Team’s Stack:

• Python, Go, bash/sh, C
• Prometheus, Victoria Metrics, Grafana
• Linux Kernel (custom build), Ubuntu
• Intel/AMD/ARM CPUs, Nvidia GPUs, DPUs, Infiniband and Ethernet NICs
• Docker, kubernetes (k8s), KubeVirt, containerd, kubelet

Focus Areas:

• Kernel Debugging – Analyze kernel crashes, oopses, panics, and dumps to identify root causes and propose fixes.
• Upstream Contributions – Develop patches for the Linux kernel and upstream them where applicable (networking, storage, virtualization, GPU/DPU enablement).
• Stack-Wide Support – Ensure kernel support and stability across:
• Virtualization (KubeVirt, QEMU, vFIO)
• Container runtimes (containerd, nydus, kubelet)
• HPC/AI workloads (CUDA, GPUDirect, RoCE/InfiniBand)
• Kernel-Hardware Enablement – Support new hardware bring-up across Intel, AMD, ARM CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs, DPUs, and NICs.
• Performance & Stability – Tune kernel subsystems for latency, throughput, and scalability in distributed HPC/AI clusters.

About the role:

• Triage and fix kernel crashes and performance regressions.
• Develop, test, and upstream kernel patches relevant to CoreWeave’s hardware/software environment.
• Collaborate with hardware vendors and the Linux community on feature enablement.
• Implement diagnostics and tooling for kernel-level observability.
• Work closely with HPC and Fleet teams to ensure kernel readiness for production workloads.
• Provide kernel-level expertise during incident response and root-cause investigations.

Who You Are:

• 5+ years of professional experience in Linux kernel engineering or systems-level development.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Deep understanding of kernel internals (memory management, scheduling, networking, storage, drivers).
• Experience debugging kernel crashes, dumps, and panics using tools like crash, gdb, kdump.
• Strong C programming skills with the ability to write maintainable and upstream-quality code.
• Experience working with kernel modules, drivers, and subsystems.
• Strong problem-solving abilities with a “full-stack” systems perspective.

Preferred:

• Contributions to the Linux kernel or related open-source projects.
• Familiarity with virtualization (KVM, QEMU, VFIO) and container runtimes.
• Networking stack expertise (InfiniBand, RoCE, TCP/IP performance tuning).
• GPU/DPU bring-up and driver experience.
• Experience in HPC or large-scale distributed systems.
• Familiarity with QA/QE best practices
• Experience working in Cloud environments
• Experience as a software engineer writing large-scale applications
• Experience with machine learning is a huge bonus

The base salary range for this role is $165,000 to $242,000. The starting salary will be determined based on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and market location. We strive for both market alignment and internal equity when determining compensation. In addition to base salary, our total rewards package includes a discretionary bonus, equity awards, and a comprehensive benefits program (all based on eligibility).