Senior Staff Linux Kernel Engineer

CRUSOE

San Francisco, USonsite$250k-$300k/yrPosted Aug 13, 2026
Posting intelligenceActively listed

Skills

pythoncicdrustgo

About the role

Crusoe is on a mission to accelerate the abundance of energy and intelligence. As the only vertically integrated AI infrastructure company built from the ground up, we own and operate each layer of the stack - from electrons to tokens - to power the world's most ambitious AI workloads. When you join Crusoe, you join a team that is building the future, faster.

We're in the midst of the greatest industrial revolution of our time. The demand for AI compute is boundless, and power is a bottleneck. We're solving that - with an energy-first approach that makes AI infrastructure better for the world and faster for the people innovating with AI.

We're looking for problem-solving, opportunity-finding teammates with a sense of urgency, who believe in the scale of our ambition and thrive on a path not fully paved - people who want to grow their careers alongside a team of experts across energy, manufacturing, data center construction, and cloud services.

If you want to do the most meaningful work of your career, help our customers and partners advance their AI strategies, and be part of a high-performing team that believes in each other, come build with us at Crusoe.

About the Role:

You will set the technical direction for Crusoe's Linux kernel team, owning the roadmap and architecting critical development projects. This role requires a balance of high-level architectural design and hands-on kernel coding. You will tackle the most complex kernel problems while mentoring and growing the engineers around you to deliver production-ready infrastructure at scale.

What You'll Be Working On:

Virtualization Architecture: Design and implement advanced virtualization technologies tailored for GPU-accelerated AI and HPC workloads. You will optimize the stack for low latency and high scalability across hypervisors and device emulation.

Linux Kernel & Driver Development: Develop and maintain upstream-first kernel code and device drivers. You will optimize memory management, scheduling, and I/O subsystems proactively to support hardware accelerators and high-throughput compute use cases.

Debugging & Security: Perform deep-dive root-cause analysis of issues across the OS and hardware layers. You will lead the triage and backporting for kernel CVEs while building automated tooling for vulnerability analysis.

Leadership: Lead and grow a high-performing systems team. You will drive engineering excellence through technical mentorship, comprehensive code reviews, and alignment with product and hardware teams.

What You'll Bring to the Team:

10+ years of experience in systems software engineering with at least 3 years in a technical leadership role managing low-level systems or infrastructure teams.

Expert-level knowledge of Linux kernel internals (memory management, scheduler, I/O) and virtualization technologies (KVM, Xen, or QEMU).

Strong C programming skills and fluency with the kernel development workflow, including patch submission and debugging security vulnerabilities.

Proficiency in modern systems programming (Go, Rust, or Python) and familiarity with CI/CD and deployment automation tooling.

Bonus Points

Familiarity with accelerators (GPUs, TPUs) and related technologies like CUDA or ROCm.

Experience with high-performance networking (e.g., InfiniBand, RoCE) and tuning virtualization stacks for HPC workloads.

Benefits:

Competitive compensation and equity packages

Restricted Stock Units

Paid time off, paid holidays & leave of absence programs

Comprehensive health, dental & vision insurance

Employer contributions to HSA account

Paid parental leave

Paid life insurance, short-term and long-term disability

Professional development & tuition reimbursement

Mental health & wellness support

Commuter benefits (parking & transit)

Cell phone stipend

401(k) Retirement plan with company match up to 4% of salary

Volunteer time off

Global travel insurance & emergency assistance

Daily meals allowance

Additional perks & programs specific to location

Compensation Range

Compensation will be paid in the range of up to $250,000 -$300,000 + Bonus. Restricted Stock Units are included in all offers. Compensation to be determined by the applicant's knowledge, education, and abilities, as well as internal equity and alignment with market data.

Compensation

This Software Engineer role pays $250k-$300k/yr. Within typical range for software engineer roles in United States.

Questions about this role

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