Principal Kernel Engineer

Jobtailor; Cambridge; On-site; GBP 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor in Cambridge is seeking an exceptionally experienced OS kernel developer to join our team. You will optimize memory management, improve scheduler performance, and refine synchronization and IPC paths on ARM64, landing production-quality kernel patches.

Candidates should have 10+ years in kernel development in C (Linux or similar), expert MM internals knowledge, deep scheduler expertise, and strong skills in kernel performance analysis.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of OS kernel development in C (Linux or comparable).
• Expert-level understanding of memory management internals (MM).
• Deep knowledge of schedulers and kernel synchronization.
• Proven kernel performance-analysis skills and ARM64 grounding.

Responsibilities

• Optimize memory management internals
• Drive scheduler performance
• Optimize synchronization primitives and lock-heavy paths
• Analyse and improve IPC and syscall paths
• Identify bottlenecks on flagship mobile workloads
• Land production-quality kernel patches
• Collaborate with CPU microarchitects on HW-SW co-design
• Contribute to AI-assisted kernel optimization pipelines

Skills

OS kernel development in C

Memory management internals

Scheduler knowledge

Kernel synchronization

IPC and syscall paths

Performance analysis

ARM64 architecture grounding

Production-grade patching

Job description

Responsibilities

• Optimize memory management internals
• Drive scheduler performance
• Optimize synchronization primitives and lock-heavy paths
• Analyse and improve IPC and syscall paths
• Identify bottlenecks on flagship mobile workloads
• Land production-quality kernel patches
• Collaborate with CPU microarchitects on HW-SW co-design
• Contribute to AI-assisted kernel optimization pipelines

Qualifications

• 10+ years of OS kernel development in C (Linux or comparable)
• Expert-level understanding of MM internals
• Deep scheduler knowledge
• Mastery of kernel synchronization
• Proven kernel performance-analysis skills
• Strong ARM64 architecture grounding