Operating System Kernel Engineer

Do you love operating systems kernel implementation, digging into the gritty interface where software meets machine? We are seeking a software engineer to work on our illumos -based host operating system, Helios . Helios sits at the center of the Oxide rack, interfacing directly with a wide range of hardware, embedded software, and third-party firmware to support the Oxide control plane, hypervisor, and its virtual machine instances. The host OS is holistically designed to begin execution with the processor’s first instruction; it uniquely subsumes and replaces functionality that UEFI and ACPI firmware provide in other architectures. As an engineer working on operating systems kernel development, you will: • Work with a helpful and experienced team to design, build, and bring up host system software on current and future Oxide computers • Read and write code in C (for the operating system writ large), in Rust (for for some in-kernel components and for higher-level services), and/or microprocessor assembly. All the code you write will be open source. • Grow and apply your understanding of microprocessors, through deep familiarity with available documentation, interacting directly with real hardware, and producing your own documents where the vendor’s fall short • Contribute to the security and resiliency of the system by designing for failure from the ground up • Participate in a rigorous code review process and help your colleagues maintain our software in a production-ready state at all times • Apply a customer-centric view to the development of new end-to-end features and functions and help realize them across the stack • Contribute to the design of new Oxide hardware and software components elsewhere in the stack You will thrive in this role if you: • Have experience in operating systems kernel development • Seek the versatility of working from core OS architecture to hardware interface to networking to device development. • Enjoy the freedom of blazing your own architectural trails and solving problems from first principles • Are up to the challenge of interfacing with hardware that has missing or inaccurate documentation • Appreciate the hard-won thrill of debugging a knotty problem to root cause • Believe in fully documenting your ideas for both current colleagues and your own future self • Enjoy reading excellent documentation produced by others • Make the tools you wish you had • Communicate effectively with engineers across a range of disciplines to exchange knowledge and expertise Before applying for this role, you should: • Experiment with an illumos -derived operating system, familiarizing yourself with tools like DTrace and MDB to explore the system • Prowl around the code in Helios • Browse our public Requests for Discussion to get a flavor for how we work • Listen to Hiring Processes with Gergely Orosz to familiarize yourself with the Oxide hiring process . • Listen to some of our episodes of Oxide and Friends . A few recommendations: • Helios on the genesis of our illumos derivative as discussed in RFD 26 • Holistic Boot on our approach to BIOS-free booting • Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino) on the work we’re doing for AMD’s Turin microprocessor • Holistic Engineering on our integrated hardware/software approach • Grown-up ZFS Data Corruption Bug on tracking down a long-standing data corruption bug in ZFS Life at Oxide We are very explicit about our values , and they can be seen in daily life at Oxide, for example: • Our rigor means we enjoy and take pride in the craft of engineering. • Our urgency means that we are not above the judicious short-cut. • Our versatility is reflected in our greatest strength: the breadth of our team. • Our transparency can be seen in our consensus-driven RFD process . • Our responsibility means that we both lead and follow: we have our own domains, but we also help others on their parts. • Our curiosity shows in our insatiable desire to learn – and our empathy in our love of teaching others. • Our humor is a big part of our daily lives: we are inveterate wise-crackers whose video meetings spill into simultaneous text chat. Apply here