Staff Software Engineer Linux Kernel

Fastly helps people stay better connected with the things they love. Fastlys edge cloud platform enables customers to create great digital experiences quickly securely and reliably by processing serving and securing our customers applications as close to their end-users as possible at the edge of the Internet. The platform is designed to take advantage of the modern internet to be programmable and to support agile software development. Fastlys customers include many of the worlds most prominent companies including GitHub Yelp Paramount and JetBlue.

Were building a more trustworthy Internet. Come join us.

Posting Open Date: 10/07/2026

Anticipated Posting Close Date*: 11/6/26

*Job posting may close early due to the volume of applicants.

Fastlys Kernel and Host Networking team builds and ships the Linux kernel that runs on every server in our global edge network and every customer request passes through it. As a Staff engineer you own technical problems end to end: from a crash signature or a new NIC on the bench through root cause and design to a change that is upstreamed and safely running on thousands of servers. The work spans networking XDP and eBPF memory performance and hardware enablement. It also spans layers. Our kernel is the datapath of a distributed system whose control planes are constantly pushing new state to the fleet so staying correct under change is part of the job. Formal CS education is not required; demonstrable experience is what matters.

• Set technical direction for kernel projects own them end to end from problem statement to fleet rollout and mentor engineers on the team
• Take new servers CPUs and NICs from first boot to full fleet: drivers IRQ affinity RSS and queue layout on high core count hosts
• Improve datapath and transport performance with XDP eBPF and protocol work based on IETF specifications
• Debug problems that cross layers with application teams such as MTU behavior cgroup memory accounting and packet filtering
• Develop and maintain kernel changes and Fastly kernel modules on our long term kernel line and reduce our private delta by upstreaming
• Make sure state pushed from control planes to eBPF and XDP programs is applied verified and safe to roll back
• Own kernel health in production: triage crashes WARNs and regressions across the fleet find the root cause and ship the fix
• Own and improve the kernel release process and the signals behind it: CI bake canary staged rollout and rollback across thousands of servers plus crash metrics and drift detection that fire before customers notice
• Join the on-call rotation lead the kernel side of incidents and drive follow-up actions to closure

• 7 years of related engineering experience including substantial production C with 3 of those years leading technical projects
• Production Linux kernel development including debugging use-after-free refcount and leak bugs with KASAN kdump ftrace perf or bpftrace
• Working knowledge of the scheduler and memory management (EEVDF memcg)
• Experience managing a kernel patch stack and working with upstream communities
• Solid understanding of the Linux network stack (TCP/IP skbuff lifecycle qdiscs NIC drivers) and XDP or eBPF with deep expertise in at least one of these areas
• Operational discipline: staged rollouts canaries kill switches observability postmortems and closing action items
• Understanding of distributed systems: control plane and datapath consistency partial failure and safe config rollout at fleet scale
• Ability to design broadly scoped work and drive it across teams

• Upstream kernel contributions or subsystem maintainership
• Deep Knowledge of Transport protocols from IETF RFCs: QUIC TCP ECN and L4S MASQUE
• Hardware enablement on AMD EPYC or Intel platforms and NIC drivers such as mlx5 ice or i40e
• Load balancing or traffic steering systems
• CDN or large edge network environments
• Container networking: network namespaces veth cgroups and eBPF-based CNI datapaths

This position requires availability during core business hours and participation in an on-call rotation.

This position is open to remote and hybrid work locations in the United States. Our US Fastly offices are located in:

• New York NY
• San Francisco CA
• Denver CO

This position may require travel as required by your role or requested by your manager.

SF / LA Fair Chance Ordinance Statement

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Salary:

The estimated salary range for this position in the US is $211370 to $253644.

Starting salary may vary based on permissible non-discriminatory factors such as experience skills qualifications and location.

This role may be eligible to participate in Fastlys equity and discretionary bonus programs.

Benefits:

We care about you. Fastly works hard to create a positive environment for our employees and we think your life outside of work is important too. We support our teams with great benefits that start on the first day of your employment with Fastly. Curious about our offerings

We offer a comprehensive benefits package including medical dental and vision insurance. Family planning mental health support along with Employee Assistance Program Insurance (Life Disability and Accident) a Flexible Vacation policy and up to 18 days of accrued paid sick leave are there to help support our employees. We also offer 401(k) (including company match) and an Employee Stock Purchase Program. For 2026 we offer 11 paid local holidays 12 paid company wellness days.

Why Fastly

• We have a huge impact.Fastly is a small company with a big reach. Not only doour customershave a tremendous user base but we also support a growing number ofopen source projects and of code employees are encouraged to share causes close to their heart with others so we can help lend a supportive hand.

• We value diversity.Growing and maintaining our inclusive and diverse team matters to us. We are committed to being a company where our employees feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work and have the ability to be successful -- every day.

• We are passionate.Fastly is chock full of passionate people and were not one size fits all. Fastly employs authors pilots skiers parents (of humans and animals) makeup geeks coffee connoisseurs and more. We love employees for who they are and what they are passionate about.

Were always looking for humble sharp and creative folks to join the Fastly team. If you think you might be a fit please apply! A fully completed application and resume or CV are required when applying.

All job applications must be submitted through our official careers site at We will never request sensitive information such as your Social Security number bank account or credit card information during the application process. All official communication will come from an @ or @ email address.

Fastly is committed to ensuring equal employment opportunity and to providing employees with a safe and welcoming work environment free of discrimination and harassment. Our employment decisions are based on business needs job requirements and individual qualifications. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age ancestry color family or medical care leave gender identity or expression genetic information marital status medical condition national origin family or parental status physical or mental disability political affiliation protected veteran status race religion sex (including pregnancy) sexual orientation or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws regulations and ordinances.

Consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and federal or state disability laws Fastly will provide reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process to perform essential job functions and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment please contact your Recruiter or the Fastly Employee Relations team at or .

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