Zipline
Senior/Staff Linux Kernel Engineer - Avionics SW
$160K–$250K
South San Francisco, California, USA +1 · Staff · Full-time · Posted Oct 2, 2026
- Location
- South San Francisco, California, USA
South San Francisco, California, United States - Experience
- 7+ years of professional Linux kernel work.
- Education
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
About the job
Own Linux kernel and platform engineering for embedded flight computers, ensuring stability, performance, hardware support, and validated reliability across Zipline’s aircraft fleet.
What you'll do
- Develop and maintain kernel drivers, bring up hardware, and debug system-level failures on real hardware and across the deployed fleet.
- Build diagnostics, automated tests, and validation processes; improve kernel reliability and performance and prevent regressions.
- Set technical direction, coordinate decisions across teams, review changes, contribute upstream, and mentor engineers.
What they ask for
- 7+ years of professional Linux kernel work, including end-to-end ownership of a driver, subsystem, or hardware bring-up.
- Strong C and deep knowledge of kernel internals, including scheduling, interrupts, concurrency, memory management, DMA, MMIO, and the Linux device model.
- Experience debugging real hardware, interpreting datasheets or interface specs, using kernel debugging tools, and validating fixes with data.
- Experience writing design docs, leading cross-team technical efforts, mentoring engineers, and using the upstream patch workflow.
Nice to have
- Experience with PCIe, Ethernet/NIC drivers, DMA, IOMMU, MSI/MSI-X, Linux networking, Embedded Linux, ARM64, device tree, or board bring-up.
- Experience with real-time systems, PREEMPT_RT, eBPF, XDP, kernel CI, upstream contributions, product kernels, hardware debugging tools, firmware, bootloaders, or test automation scripting.
Pay
$160,000 - $250,000 USD base salary; Software Engineer II: $160,000 - $190,000 USD base salary; Senior Software Engineer: $190,000 - $220,000 USD base salary; Staff Software Engineer: $220,000 - $250,000 USD base salary
Tools
Linux kernel, C, ftrace, perf, dynamic debug, PCIe, ARM64, PREEMPT_RT
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