{"id":1966039,"url":"https://alion.io/job/efficient-computer-senior-staff-software-engineer-linux-kernel","title":"Senior Staff Software Engineer, Linux Kernel","company":{"id":2217001,"name":"Efficient Computer","domain":"efficient.computer","url":"https://alion.io/company/efficient-computer","size_band":"11-50","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":5,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-14T06:34:16Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"staff","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Pittsburgh, United States","San Francisco, United States","San Jose, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":220000,"max":270000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":270000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":7,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Cadence Palladium","optional":false},{"name":"CUDA","optional":false},{"name":"CUDA Toolkit","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"QEMU","optional":false},{"name":"ROCm","optional":false},{"name":"Siemens Veloce","optional":false},{"name":"Synopsys ZeBu","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-06T15:58:43Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-06","last_verified_at":"2026-10-14T09:02:52Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":7,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":7},"description":"Efficient Computer is rethinking computing from the ground up to solve one of AI's biggest challenges: energy. Our Fabric architecture delivers a 10-100x improvement in energy efficiency for general-purpose computation, including AI, while supporting familiar programming languages and software frameworks-unlocking new possibilities for autonomous machines, intelligent infrastructure, wearables, and space systems. With our first processor, Electron E1, now shipping in volume and more than $97 million in Series B financing recently announced, we're accelerating customer deployments and scaling our architecture to data center performance. Join us to build the hardware and software that bring intelligence wherever it's needed and help shape the next generation of computing.\nEfficient Computer is building the next generation of energy efficient, general-purpose processors designed around the Fabric architecture, a novel spatial dataflow design spun out from decades of fundamental SOC research at CMU.\nWe are looking for a Senior Staff Linux Kernel Driver Engineer to own the kernel-mode driver that brings our Fabric to life. You will bring up new silicon from the very first boot, often before the silicon exists, working in QEMU, functional simulation, emulation, and FPGA environments to make sure our runtime software layers work on day one. \nThis is a key role for the System Software team: you will work closely with architecture, micro-architecture, verification and compiler teams during pre-silicon development and bring-up. \nKey Responsibilities\nOwn the Kernel Driver\nDesign, implement, and maintain the Linux kernel-mode driver for the Fabric accelerator. This includes device discovery and probe, MMIO register interfaces, interrupt handling, command and completion queue management, power management, firmware, chip diagnostics, logging and device health, as well as abstracting the user-space ABI with a HAL that the runtime depends on.\nDefine how custom hardware accelerators are exposed to Linux: ioctl and sysfs interfaces, and the submission and synchronization model between application cores and the Fabric.\nKeep the driver clean, upstreamable in style, and portable across kernel and device versions.\nImplement the unified memory model between ARM cores and the Fabric accelerator.\nOwn SMMU (IOMMU) integration: stream and context configuration, tensor pool allocation, page table management, stage-1 and stage-2 translation, shared virtual addressing, and fault handling.\nDrive Pre-Silicon Bringup and Platform Enablement\nBuild and maintain QEMU device models and board definitions for the Fabric and its SoC so that the kernel, driver, and runtime can be developed and tested before silicon.\nOwn the Linux boot path on new platforms: boot firmware handoff, device tree, kernel configuration, early console, and root filesystem, from the first boot in emulation through FPGA prototypes to production silicon.\nLead kernel-side bring up on first silicon: validating MMIO map, interrupts, clocks, resets, and memory against the hardware specification, and turning what you find into bug reports and design feedback for the hardware team.\nBe the go-to engineer for kernel debugging across the stack: crash dumps, KGDB and JTAG, ftrace and perf, lockdep and KASAN, and the hard-to-reproduce hangs and memory corruptions that only show up on real hardware.\nEstablish kernel-level test coverage, including driver unit tests, emulation-based regression suites, and hardware-in-the-loop validation.\nRequired Qualifications\nB.S. in Electrical/Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent; M.S. a plus.\n7+ years of systems software experience, including significant hands-on Linux kernel-mode driver development for complex devices (accelerators, GPUs, NPUs, networking, or storage).\nDeep understanding of Linux kernel memory management, including cache coherence, IOMMU/SMMU configuration, and unified or shared virtual memory between CPU and accelerators.\nHands-on experience with QEMU, emulation, or simulation environments, including writing or extending device models and board definitions.\nExperience with pre-silicon hardware bring up and first-silicon enablement, working from hardware specifications and register maps before the platform is stable.\nExperience designing runtime interfaces between kernel and user space: ABI and HAL design, synchronization, memory sharing, and error handling.\nStrong kernel debugging skills across crash analysis, tracing, hardware debuggers, and race and memory-corruption diagnosis.\nFluency with memory-mapped I/O: register-level programming, ordering and barrier semantics, and interrupt handling.\nExperience interfacing custom hardware accelerators to Linux.\nStrong experience with ARM cores and the ARM architecture (AArch64, exception levels, GIC, SMMU, cache and memory attributes).\nSolid understanding of the Linux boot flow: boot firmware, device tree, kernel initialization, and early platform enablement.\nExpert C and strong scripting skills; comfortable working with AI-assisted development tools for code, analysis, and debugging.\nDesired Qualifications\nExperience with FPGA prototyping and hardware emulation platforms (Palladium, Zebu, Veloce, or similar).\nKnowledge of dataflow, spatial, or other novel compute architectures, and of how compilers and runtimes target them.\nExperience on a first-generation silicon product, where the software stack and the hardware matured together.\nExperience working on a CUDA, ROCm, or other language runtime software stack.\nWe offer a competitive base salary for this role, generally ranging from $220,000 to $270,000, plus a 10% annual bonus, meaningful equity, and comprehensive benefits. Final compensation will depend on experience, level, and location, with flexibility for the right candidate.\nWhy Join Efficient?\nBuild what's next. At Efficient, you'll tackle big challenges with room to take ownership and make an impact. We back you with competitive pay, equity, a 401(k) match, company-paid benefits, paid parental leave, and flexibility-plus opportunities to grow your skills and career as we scale.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6135,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":7,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Parental leave"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Processors, MCUs & AI Chips","AI Chips & Accelerators"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-06T17:30:20Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":7,"expected_fill_days":30,"reasons":["conf:2","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-14T06:34:16Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":270000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/efficient-computer-senior-staff-software-engineer-linux-kernel","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/efficient-computer-senior-staff-software-engineer-linux-kernel.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-14T11:42:15Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":13993,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-15T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":2217001},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=2217001"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fefficient-computer-senior-staff-software-engineer-linux-kernel"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fefficient-computer-senior-staff-software-engineer-linux-kernel"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fefficient-computer-senior-staff-software-engineer-linux-kernel"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/efficient-computer-senior-staff-software-engineer-linux-kernel\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fefficient-computer-senior-staff-software-engineer-linux-kernel"}]}