At a Glance
- Tasks: Drive kernel performance and power optimisation for flagship mobile platforms.
- Company: Leading telecommunications R&D company based in Cambridge.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, flexible working, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Other info: Collaborative environment with a focus on AI-driven optimisation and career advancement.
- Why this job: Make a real impact on mobile technology and work with cutting-edge innovations.
- Qualifications: 10+ years of OS kernel development experience and expert-level understanding of memory management.
The predicted salary is between 80000 - 100000 £ per year.
European Tech Recruit are working closely with a leading telecommunications R&D company, based in Cambridge, who are looking for a talented Principal Kernel Engineer to join their team. In this role you will drive deep kernel performance and power optimization for flagship mobile platforms. You will own performance across core kernel subsystems — memory management, scheduling, IPC, and synchronization — analysing behaviour on real silicon down to the microarchitectural level and landing production‑shippable optimizations that improve responsiveness, throughput, and battery life. This is a hands‑on role for an engineer who is at home in allocator internals, scheduler hot paths, and lock‑contention traces, working alongside CPU microarchitects, runtime engineers, and AI‑driven optimization tooling.
Responsibilities
- 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.
- Collaborate with CPU microarchitects on HW‑SW co‑design: exploit microarchitectural features in the kernel and shape future hardware through kernel‑driven requirements.
- Contribute to AI‑assisted kernel optimisation pipelines.
Requirements
- 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.
- 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.
- Mobile power engineering: DVFS governors, cpuidle, per‑workload energy attribution.
- Upstream Linux kernel contributions (mm, sched, locking, or related subsystems).
- Familiarity with HarmonyOS or Android common kernel.
- Exposure to CPU microarchitecture and cycle‑accurate modelling (gem5).
- Experience with LLM/agentic tooling applied to systems software.
If this role is of any interest please apply directly on LinkedIn or send a copy of your CV to . By applying to this role you understand that we may collect your personal data and store and process it on our systems. For more information please see our Privacy Notice.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Principal Kernel Engineer in Peterborough
✨Get Chummy with Industry Events
Dive into telecommunications networking conferences and expos. These are golden opportunities to meet potential employers like European Tech Recruit and learn about open positions directly from their teams. Keep an eye out for workshops or panels – they’re perfect for showcasing your passion and expertise!
✨Join Networking Communities
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✨Showcase Your Skills with Personal Projects
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We think you need these skills to ace Principal Kernel Engineer in Peterborough
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show Off Your Technical Know-How:When you're applying for a role in telecommunications and networking, it’s crucial to highlight your technical skills. Mention specific technologies you're proficient in, like IP networking, VoIP, or security protocols. Be sure your CV includes any relevant certifications such as CCNA or CompTIA Network+; they really show you've got the chops for the job.
Tailor Your Experience to Match Networking Projects:In your CV and cover letter, don’t just list your past jobs—showcase specific projects that align with the role! If you've worked on network design, implementation, or troubleshooting, weave those experiences in and highlight metrics to demonstrate your impact. This paints a vivid picture of how you'd fit into the role at European Tech Recruit.
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How to prepare for a job interview at European Tech Recruit
✨Brush Up on Networking Protocols
Make sure you’re up to speed with the key networking protocols like TCP/IP, UDP, and perhaps even MPLS if it's relevant. We can expect technical questions about how these protocols function and the problems they solve, so a solid understanding will help you shine.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Got a portfolio? Bring it along! Highlight any relevant projects where you've designed or managed network systems. This is your chance to demonstrate practical experience; employers love to see how your skills can be applied in real-world scenarios.
✨Get Comfortable with Technical Scenarios
You might be faced with a case study or a technical troubleshooting scenario during the interview. Practise responding to common networking issues—like packet loss or latency problems. Thinking through these scenarios will help us sound confident and competent in our responses.
✨Emphasise Team Collaboration Skills
In the telecommunications field, teamwork is key! Make sure to share examples of how you’ve worked collaboratively, whether in past jobs or projects at uni. Employers want to see that you’re not just technically savvy, but also great at working within a team setting.
