Senior Linux Kernel Engineer

The Managed Systems Integration Engineering (MSIE) group is responsible for provisioning, configuring, and maintaining the majority of Bloomberg's production fleet throughout its lifecycle, and the group uses an infrastructure-as-code approach in conjunction with open-source tools to ensure a scalable and reliable environment in which to operate.

Within MSIE, the Systems Internals team is responsible for kernel-space performance and configuration standards, developing tooling for networking stack functionality, and providing engineering leadership for how best to optimize the interaction between applications and OS interfaces. The team is composed of a set of engineers with expertise in eBPF and/or the Linux kernel and acts as a bridge between application development teams and the lower-level components of the OS by assisting with application performance profiling, benchmarking and certifying production-readiness of new OS releases and patches, and advising on how best to consume system resources.

What's in it for you:

You'll work with modern, open-source tooling while maintaining mission-critical systems hosting a wide array of applications for the Bloomberg Terminal product. You will regularly collaborate with other OS and service-owning teams to maintain the stability and performance of operating systems and servers. We'll depend on you to advise on the design, architecture, and utilization of enterprise-class operating systems, with particular focus on Linux. You will have the opportunity to work on developing performance tooling while testing the latest kernels and their features. You will also have the opportunity to contribute back to the open-source community; it is a rewarding experience you can explore with us.

Build and evolve eBPF-based tools to enhance observability of the network and other operating system layers

Improve Bloomberg's internal Linux kernel regression testing framework

Contribute to upstream Linux kernel development and enhancement requests

Investigate and resolve complex kernel and network performance issues in partnership with application teams

Develop tools that improve telemetry and deepen visibility into application behavior under various system loads

Create internal documentation to support knowledge sharing and engineering best practices

You'll need to have:

Deep understanding of the Linux kernel including the virtual memory, VFS, IPC, network, and process scheduling subsystems

Proven experience in system performance tuning-balancing low latency vs. throughput, NUMA optimization, and hardware/BIOS configuration

Ability to create robust testing and certification processes to comprehensively evaluate the impact of hardware changes, tunables, and system software updates to the Bloomberg application stack

Proficiency in reading and debugging C source code to troubleshoot kernel-space issues

Eagerness to work with a group, share knowledge, and contribute to team goals

A Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or related technical field, or equivalent work experience

We would love to see:

Experience working with and developing in the Linux kernel, either using eBPF, as a kernel developer, or building low level programs in C

Experience programming in Rust or Python

Experience with applying formalized performance analysis methodologies such as the USE Method to address complex problems

Familiarity with one or more of the following technologies is preferred: Chef, SaltStack, Jenkins, and Ansible