Systems Engineer, Kernel

What Youll Do:

CoreWeave is seeking a highly skilled and motivated Systems Kernel Engineer to join our HAVOCK Team reporting into the Manager of Systems this role you will be a key contributor to the stability performance and evolution of CoreWeaves Linux based infrastructure. As a kernel generalist you will be responsible for debugging kernel-level issues analyzing and fixing crashes panics dumps and upstreaming fixes and features that improves the performance and reliability of our stack.

This position is ideal for someone who thrives in low-level systems engineering and understands how modern workloads stress kernels and is excited to work across a diverse hardware/software ecosystem including CPUs GPUs DPUs networking and storage.

Kernel Hardware - Acceleration - Virtualization - Operating Systems - Containerization - Kubelet

Our Teams Stack:

• Python Go bash/sh C
• Prometheus Victoria Metrics Grafana
• Linux Kernel (custom build) Ubuntu
• Intel/AMD/ARM CPUs Nvidia GPUs DPUs Infiniband and Ethernet NICs
• Docker kubernetes (k8s) KubeVirt containerd kubelet

Focus Areas:

• Kernel Debugging Analyze kernel crashes oopses panics and dumps to identify root causes and propose fixes.
• Upstream Contributions Develop patches for the Linux kernel and upstream them where applicable (networking storage virtualization GPU/DPU enablement).
• Stack-Wide Support Ensure kernel support and stability across:
• Virtualization (KubeVirt QEMU vFIO)
• Container runtimes (containerd nydus kubelet)
• HPC/AI workloads (CUDA GPUDirect RoCE/InfiniBand)
• Kernel-Hardware Enablement Support new hardware bring-up across Intel AMD ARM CPUs NVIDIA GPUs DPUs and NICs.
• Performance & Stability Tune kernel subsystems for latency throughput and scalability in distributed HPC/AI clusters.

About the role:

• Triage and fix kernel crashes and performance regressions.
• Develop test and upstream kernel patches relevant to CoreWeaves hardware/software environment.
• Collaborate with hardware vendors and the Linux community on feature enablement.
• Implement diagnostics and tooling for kernel-level observability.
• Work closely with HPC and Fleet teams to ensure kernel readiness for production workloads.
• Provide kernel-level expertise during incident response and root-cause investigations.

Who You Are:

• 5 years of professional experience in Linux kernel engineering or systems-level development.
• Deep understanding of kernel internals (memory management scheduling networking storage drivers).
• Experience debugging kernel crashes dumps and panics using tools like crash gdb kdump.
• Strong C programming skills with the ability to write maintainable and upstream-quality code.
• Experience working with kernel modules drivers and subsystems.
• Strong problem-solving abilities with a full-stack systems perspective.

Preferred:

• Contributions to the Linux kernel or related open-source projects.
• Familiarity with virtualization (KVM QEMU VFIO) and container runtimes.
• Networking stack expertise (InfiniBand RoCE TCP/IP performance tuning).
• GPU/DPU bring-up and driver experience.
• Experience in HPC or large-scale distributed systems.
• Familiarity with QA/QE best practices
• Experience working in Cloud environments
• Experience as a software engineer writing large-scale applications
• Experience with machine learning is a huge bonus

The base salary range for this role is $165000 to $242000. The starting salary will be determined based on job-related knowledge skills experience and market location. We strive for both market alignment and internal equity when determining addition to base salary our total rewards package includes a discretionary bonus equity awards and a comprehensive benefits program (all based on eligibility).