Lead Linux Kernel Driver Engineer for Fabric Accelerator

Efficient Computer; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 220,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive base salary

Annual bonus

Equity

401(k) match

Comprehensive benefits

Job summary

Efficient Computer is building energy-efficient, general-purpose processors based on the Fabric architecture. We seek a Senior Staff Linux Kernel Driver Engineer to own the kernel-mode driver, bring up silicon in QEMU and emulation, and collaborate with architecture, verification, and compiler teams to deliver a day-one runtime.

You will lead kernel bring-up, define device interfaces, and ensure an upstreamable, portable driver across kernel versions while enabling memory sharing and SMMU

Qualifications

• BS in Electrical/Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent; MS a plus.
• 7+ years of systems software experience with Linux kernel driver development.
• Deep understanding of Linux kernel memory management and IOMMU/SMMU.
• Hands-on with QEMU, emulation, or simulation environments.
• Experience with pre-silicon bring-up and first-silicon enablement.
• Experience designing kernel-to-user interfaces: ABI and HAL.
• Strong kernel debugging skills across crash analysis and tracing.
• Fluency with memory-mapped I/O and interrupt handling.
• Experience interfacing custom accelerators to Linux.
• Strong experience with ARM cores and the ARM architecture.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain the Linux kernel-mode driver for the Fabric accelerator including MMIO, interrupts, CQ management, and HAL interfaces.
• Define Linux exposure of custom hardware accelerators via ioctl and sysfs; model synchronization with application cores.
• Ensure driver is upstreamable and portable across kernel/device versions.
• Implement unified memory model between ARM cores and Fabric accelerator; own SMMU integration.
• Lead pre-silicon bring-up: QEMU models, boot path, and early platform enablement.
• Be the go-to kernel debugging expert across the stack with crash dumps, KGDB, and memory analysis.
• Establish kernel-level test coverage and regression suites.

Skills

Linux kernel

C programming

ARM AArch64

QEMU/emulation

Kernel debugging

Boot firmware

Device tree

IOMMU/SMMU

First-silicon bring-up

Education

B.S. in Electrical/Computer Engineering or CS

Tools

QEMU

Emulation/simulation

JTAG

Job description

Efficient Computer is building energy-efficient, general-purpose processors based on the Fabric architecture. We seek a Senior Staff Linux Kernel Driver Engineer to own the kernel-mode driver, bring up silicon in QEMU and emulation, and collaborate with architecture, verification, and compiler teams to deliver a day-one runtime.

You will lead kernel bring-up, define device interfaces, and ensure an upstreamable, portable driver across kernel versions while enabling memory sharing and SMMU