At a Glance
- Tasks: Optimise kernel performance and memory management for cutting-edge mobile workloads.
- Company: Leading international semiconductor and consumer electronics company.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, flexible working options, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Other info: Dynamic work environment with a focus on collaboration and career advancement.
- Why this job: Join a team driving innovation in mobile technology and make a real impact.
- Qualifications: 10+ years of OS kernel development experience and expert-level knowledge in memory management.
The predicted salary is between 80000 - 100000 £ per year.
Our client is an international semiconductor and consumer electronics company.
The Role:
- Optimize memory management internals: buddy allocator, slab/SLUB, page reclaim and LRU/MGLRU, memory compaction and defragmentation, transparent huge pages, page-fault and TLB-shootdown paths, copy-on-write behaviour.
- Drive scheduler performance: run-queue and load-balancing behaviour, energy-aware scheduling, wakeup latency, task placement on heterogeneous (big.LITTLE/DynamIQ) topologies, cpufreq/cpuidle governor interaction.
- Optimize synchronization primitives and lock-heavy paths: futex fast/slow paths, mutexes and rwsems, spinlocks/qspinlocks, RCU, seqlocks, per-CPU data, memory ordering and barriers on ARM64.
- Analyse and improve IPC and syscall paths: context-switch cost, binder-style IPC, shared memory, vDSO, interrupt/softirq handling.
- Identify bottlenecks on flagship mobile workloads (gaming, day-of-use, camera, AI inference) using PMU counters, ftrace/perf, eBPF, lockdep/lockstat, and power measurement with mA/mAh attribution.
- Land production-quality kernel patches from hypothesis through benchmarking to ship, with measured latency and energy impact.
Must-Haves:
- 10+ years of OS kernel development in C (Linux or comparable), with patches shipped to production systems at scale.
- Expert-level understanding of MM internals: physical/virtual memory management, buddy and slab allocation, reclaim, compaction, page tables, TLB management.
- Deep scheduler knowledge: CFS/EEVDF internals, load balancing, preemption, real-time classes, energy-aware scheduling.
- Mastery of kernel synchronization: locking primitives, RCU, lock-free techniques, the ARM64 memory model and barrier semantics.
- Proven kernel performance-analysis skills: PMU counters, ftrace/perf, eBPF, lock contention and latency analysis.
- Strong ARM64 architecture grounding: exception levels, cache hierarchy and maintenance, TLBs, memory ordering.
Kernel Engineer in Cambridge employer: All The Top Bananas
As a Principal Kernel Engineer at our client, an esteemed international semiconductor and consumer electronics company, you will thrive in a dynamic work culture that prioritises innovation and collaboration. With a strong commitment to employee growth, the company offers extensive professional development opportunities and encourages a healthy work-life balance, making it an exceptional employer for those seeking to make a meaningful impact in the tech industry.
We think you need these skills to ace Kernel Engineer in Cambridge
Memory Management Internals
C Programming
OS Kernel Development
Kernel Patching
Scheduler Performance Optimisation
Synchronization Primitives
Performance Analysis
