Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Cornelis Networks is hiring a NIC Kernel Driver Managing Engineer to lead its Linux kernel driver team. The role combines people leadership and delivery planning with hands-on driver development, upstream Linux community engagement, and collaboration across hardware, firmware, and software teams.
Responsibilities
- Team Leadership & Delivery: Lead the kernel driver team; own release planning, execution tracking, and delivery of driver features aligned to the Cornelis product roadmap. Engage in headcount planning, performance management, and hiring
- Hands-On Technical Contribution: Perform code and design reviews, contribute patches, and lead debug of complex kernel issues (PCIe/MMIO, DMA, MSI-X and interrupt handling, memory registration and address translation, command/completion ring management, device reset and error recovery)
- Pre-Silicon Bring-Up: Drive driver enablement ahead of tapeout using emulation, FPGA prototypes, and virtual PCIe device models, so first-silicon bring-up is measured in days rather than months. Emulation is deployed from day one on our ASIC programs; your team is a first-class consumer of it
- Upstream & Open-Source Stewardship: Drive patch submission and review cycles on linux-rdma, netdev, and related mailing lists; keep drivers in-tree and supported across RHEL, SLES, and Ubuntu distributions
- Cross-Stack Collaboration: Partner with ASIC/silicon, firmware, libfabric provider, middleware, and validation teams to define and stabilize the kernel/user-space interface (ioctls, mmap'd rings, doorbells, dma-buf for GPU and accelerator memory)
- Quality, Test & Release: Establish and maintain CI, regression, and stress coverage for driver changes; own driver documentation, module packaging, and release readiness
- Customer & Field Impact: Triage escalations, reproduce customer-reported issues, and translate findings into prioritized fixes with clear status communication to stakeholders
Skills
- 8+ years of systems/kernel software engineering experience in C on Linux
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience)
- 2+ years of formal or informal leadership experience (people manager, team lead, or tech lead) with demonstrated interest in people management
- Hands-on Linux device driver development: PCIe device enumeration, BAR/MMIO register access, DMA mapping, interrupt handling, locking and concurrency, and kernel debugging (crash/kdump, ftrace, perf, kgdb)
- Depth in at least one high-performance networking subsystem — for example, the Linux RDMA core stack (uverbs/ib_core, rdma-core, QP/CQ/MR lifecycle), the netdev datapath (NAPI, multi-queue, XDP/AF_XDP, ethtool/devlink), or an upstream vendor NIC/fabric driver such as mlx5, irdma, ice, bnxt_re, efa, or hfi1
- Demonstrated ability to diagnose performance and correctness issues in low-latency, high-throughput data paths
- Experience contributing to open-source projects, with familiarity with upstream Linux patch and review processes
- Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to represent the team's work to engineering leadership and customers
- Master's or Doctorate
- Prior experience as a maintainer or reviewer for an upstream Linux driver
- Familiarity with HPC fabrics, such as Omni-Path, InfiniBand, Slingshot or other host fabric interface drivers
- Experience with RoCEv2, congestion control, and/or Ethernet-based RDMA deployments
- Familiarity with Ultra Ethernet (UEC/UET) specifications
- Knowledge of libfabric/OFI provider interfaces and kernel/user-space co-design
- Experience with GPUDirect RDMA, dma-buf, and CUDA/ROCm memory interoperability
- Experience with driver packaging and distro enablement (RHEL/SLES/Ubuntu), and cluster-scale benchmarking, profiling, and optimization
Benefits
- Fully remote work for employees residing within the United States
- Equity
- Performance-based incentives, including an annual bonus or sales incentives, depending on role
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Disability and life insurance
- Dependent care flexible spending account
- Accidental injury insurance
- Pet insurance
- Generous paid holidays
- 401(k) with company match
- Open Time Off (OTO) for regular full-time exempt employees
- Sick time
- Bonding leave
- Pregnancy disability leave
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