Linux Kernel OS Developer

IBM 

📍 Waterford, County Waterford, Ireland, Ireland 🇮🇪

full-time
mid-level
hybrid
Posted —

Key Skills

LinuxC++RustGitJenkins

Industry

Consumer ElectronicsTelecommunications

Job Description

Introduction

We’ve been expanding our Linux Kernel Engineering team, hiring early-career professionals to grow our talent pipeline. This position, however, is a more mid-senior role—ideal for developers who bring 3+ years of hands-on, professional experience working with the Linux kernel and low-level system software. You’ll play a key part in designing, optimizing, and contributing to the technologies that drive our next-generation enterprise systems.

Why Join Us

  • Build on your expertise by owning end-to-end kernel development in a high-impact environment.
  • Collaborate with and mentor early-career developers while driving innovation in open-source software.
  • Hybrid work model with onsite collaboration 3 days per week for hands-on integration and team synergy.
  • Be part of a company that actively contributes to and supports open-source communities.
  • Make a measurable difference in the performance, stability, and scalability of enterprise-grade systems.

Your Role And Responsibilities

  • Lead the design and development of new kernel features, enhancements, and device drivers.
  • Analyze and optimize system performance in key areas like memory management, process scheduling, and I/O subsystems.
  • Diagnose, debug, and resolve complex kernel-level issues, collaborating closely with global and open-source teams.
  • Contribute code upstream to public open-source repositories (e.g., the Linux kernel community).
  • Work with Git, Python, and CI/CD tools (e.g., Jenkins) to automate, test, and maintain system integrity.
  • Partner with clients to analyze, reproduce, and solve deep technical challenges.

Preferred Education

Bachelor's Degree

Required Technical And Professional Expertise

  • Demonstrated professional experience in low-level software or kernel development (C/C++, Rust).
  • Strong understanding of operating system internals, including memory management, scheduling, interrupts, and device drivers.
  • Experience with source code management (Git), scripting (Bash), and automation frameworks (Jenkins).
  • Demonstrated involvement and contributions to open-source communities, ideally the Linux kernel or related projects.
  • Working knowledge of modern I/O technologies (PCI, NVMe, RDMA).
  • Excellent problem-solving and performance analysis skills using kernel debugging tools.

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

  • Previous contributions to Open Source projects Skills in current I/O technologies (e.g. PCI, NVMe, RDMA)
  • Skills in IBM Z architecture ("Principles of Operations"), Z assembler and I/O concepts