Kernel/OS Engineer, AWS EC2 Nitro Operating System
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 10, 2026. First seen by Alion on Oct 8, 2026. Amazon scores A on the Alion truth index.
AWS EC2 Nitro powers the world's largest, fastest-growing, and most feature-rich compute cloud. Built from the ground up for virtualization at global scale, Nitro is a fully custom stack of hardware, firmware, and software that enables EC2 to support Intel, AMD, and AWS's own Graviton processors - while setting industry benchmarks for security and performance. With our Nitro System, we break apart traditional hypervisor functions like CPU virtualization, storage, and networking, and offload them to dedicated hardware and software. This enables us to deliver practically all of the resources of a server to customer instances, innovate faster, increase security, deliver new instance types, and reduce customer cost.
The Nitro Linux team owns the secure, embedded Linux environment at the heart of this system. We build and maintain the operating system that integrates with the Nitro control plane and powers live updates, metrics collection, core dump handling, and system health monitoring across AWS's global infrastructure. Linux, ash, C, lua, Rust - join us for embedded software systems at cloud scale!
Key job responsibilities
- Research, design, and implement Linux kernel changes to meet business requirements
- Drive kernel development for next-generation EC2 compute platforms
- Bring up Linux on new hardware platforms and custom silicon
- Debug complex, system-level, multi-component issues across layers from kernel to application
- Profile system performance and drive optimizations across the software stack
- Develop tooling for performance characterization, qualification, and deployment
- Deliver production-quality code and support its operation in production environments
- Collaborate across hardware, firmware, systems, and application software teams
- Openness to leveraging AI tools and technologies to enhance productivity and technical problem-solving.
Basic qualifications
- 3+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
- 2+ years of non-internship design or architecture (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
- Experience programming with at least one software programming language
Preferred qualifications
- 3+ years of full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations experience
- Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent
Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.
Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.
The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.
USA, CA, SANTA CLARA - 165,200.00 - 223,600.00 USD annually
USA, WA, Seattle - 143,700.00 - 194,400.00 USD annually