Operating System Kernel Engineer

Oxide Computer Company
Remote

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Job Details

Full-time
$250,000 a year

Benefits

Health insurance
Dental insurance
Vision insurance
Flexible schedule

Qualifications

Software engineering
Rust (programming language)
Defect resolution root cause analysis
Software coding
Mid-level
System design for system development
OS Kernels
Production systems
C
Design engineering
Software documentation
Operating system security
Root cause analysis
Design of individual components
Cross-functional communication
Microprocessors
Providing code feedback

Full Job Description

Do you love operating systems kernel implementation, digging into the gritty interface where software meets machine? We are seeking a software engineer to work on our illumos-based host operating system, Helios. Helios sits at the center of the Oxide rack, interfacing directly with a wide range of hardware, embedded software, and third-party firmware to support the Oxide control plane, hypervisor, and its virtual machine instances. The host OS is holistically designed to begin execution with the processor’s first instruction; it uniquely subsumes and replaces functionality that UEFI and ACPI firmware provide in other architectures.

As an engineer working on operating systems kernel development, you will:

Work with a helpful and experienced team to design, build, and bring up host system software on current and future Oxide computers
Read and write code in C (for the operating system writ large), in Rust (for for some in-kernel components and for higher-level services), and/or microprocessor assembly. All the code you write will be open source.
Grow and apply your understanding of microprocessors, through deep familiarity with available documentation, interacting directly with real hardware, and producing your own documents where the vendor’s fall short
Contribute to the security and resiliency of the system by designing for failure from the ground up
Participate in a rigorous code review process and help your colleagues maintain our software in a production-ready state at all times
Apply a customer-centric view to the development of new end-to-end features and functions and help realize them across the stack
Contribute to the design of new Oxide hardware and software components elsewhere in the stack

You will thrive in this role if you:

Have experience in operating systems kernel development
Seek the versatility of working from core OS architecture to hardware interface to networking to device development.
Enjoy the freedom of blazing your own architectural trails and solving problems from first principles
Are up to the challenge of interfacing with hardware that has missing or inaccurate documentation
Appreciate the hard-won thrill of debugging a knotty problem to root cause
Believe in fully documenting your ideas for both current colleagues and your own future self
Enjoy reading excellent documentation produced by others
Make the tools you wish you had
Communicate effectively with engineers across a range of disciplines to exchange knowledge and expertise

Before applying for this role, you should:

Experiment with an illumos-derived operating system, familiarizing yourself with tools like DTrace and MDB to explore the system
Prowl around the code in Helios
Browse our public Requests for Discussion to get a flavor for how we work
Listen to Hiring Processes with Gergely Orosz to familiarize yourself with the Oxide hiring process.
Listen to some of our episodes of Oxide and Friends. A few recommendations:
- Helios on the genesis of our illumos derivative as discussed in RFD 26
- Holistic Boot on our approach to BIOS-free booting
- Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino) on the work we’re doing for AMD’s Turin microprocessor
- Holistic Engineering on our integrated hardware/software approach
- Grown-up ZFS Data Corruption Bug on tracking down a long-standing data corruption bug in ZFS

Life at Oxide

We are very explicit about our values, and they can be seen in daily life at Oxide, for example:

Our rigor means we enjoy and take pride in the craft of engineering.
Our urgency means that we are not above the judicious short-cut.
Our versatility is reflected in our greatest strength: the breadth of our team.
Our transparency can be seen in our consensus-driven RFD process.
Our responsibility means that we both lead and follow: we have our own domains, but we also help others on their parts.
Our curiosity shows in our insatiable desire to learn – and our empathy in our love of teaching others.
Our humor is a big part of our daily lives: we are inveterate wise-crackers whose video meetings spill into simultaneous text chat.

Working at Oxide

Remote first

Most of our team are based outside of the Bay Area. We do ask that your workday overlaps with Pacific Time for at least four hours.

Flexible working hours

Our families and lives outside of our jobs are very important to us; our schedules are flexible to reflect and support that.

Premium healthcare

We offer the best medical PPO, dental, and vision plans we can find and cover 100% of premiums for employees and dependents.

Compensation

Everyone at Oxide makes $250,000 USD, regardless of location. (Some sales positions have a lower base salary and contain a commission component.)

Apply Now

As an engineer working on operating systems kernel development, you will:

You will thrive in this role if you:

Before applying for this role, you should:

Life at Oxide

Working at Oxide

Remote first

Flexible working hours

Premium healthcare

Compensation

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