Senior Linux Performance Engineer — Real-Time Embedded

Socket.dev; Pittsburgh (Allegheny County); Hybrid; USD 149,000 - 198,500; Full time

Job summary

Motional is seeking a Linux Systems Performance Engineer to improve the performance, reliability, and observability of our onboard compute platform. This hybrid role in Pittsburgh focuses on developing observability methods and collaborating with autonomy teams to diagnose and resolve resource contention, crashes, and latency spikes.

You will build tools and telemetry to enable faster root cause analysis and work with cross-functional teams across CPU, memory, storage, networking, and more.

Qualifications

• Experience debugging Linux performance in complex systems.
• Strong knowledge of OS concepts: scheduling, memory, IPC.
• Experience diagnosing resource contention, latency, and crashes.
• Ability to translate findings into actionable changes.

Responsibilities

• Design and build low-overhead observability infrastructure for resource usage, latency, scheduling behavior, and system health.
• Develop metrics, tracing, profiling, and analysis tools that identify performance contention and explain system behavior.
• Improve real-time and post-event root cause analysis across CPU, memory, storage, networking, and other shared resources.
• Partner with autonomy and platform teams to investigate crashes, latency spikes, missed deadlines, resource exhaustion, and performance regressions.
• Analyze application, operating system, kernel, and hardware interactions on embedded Linux compute platforms.
• Translate investigations into durable improvements, including tooling, alerts, dashboards, performance requirements, and architectural changes.
• Define performance benchmarks and regression tests for onboard systems.
• Evaluate the performance impact of new software, hardware, and system configurations.
• Communicate findings clearly and provide actionable recommendations to cross-functional engineering teams.
• Contribute to technical roadmaps for onboard observability and system performance.

Skills

Linux performance debugging

OS concepts

Resource contention analysis

C/C++ programming

Python scripting

Cross-functional collaboration

Communication skills

Tools

perf

ftrace

eBPF/BPF

bpftrace

flame graphs

BCC

Job description

Motional is seeking a Linux Systems Performance Engineer to improve the performance, reliability, and observability of our onboard compute platform. This hybrid role in Pittsburgh focuses on developing observability methods and collaborating with autonomy teams to diagnose and resolve resource contention, crashes, and latency spikes.

You will build tools and telemetry to enable faster root cause analysis and work with cross-functional teams across CPU, memory, storage, networking, and more.