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 are 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 employer: microTECH Global LTD
As a Principal Kernel Engineer at our international semiconductor and consumer electronics company, you will thrive in a dynamic work environment that fosters innovation and collaboration. We offer competitive benefits, a strong focus on employee development, and opportunities to work on cutting-edge technology that impacts millions globally. Our inclusive culture encourages creativity and teamwork, making it an ideal place for professionals seeking meaningful and rewarding careers.
We think you need these skills to ace Kernel Engineer
C Programming
OS Kernel Development
Memory Management Internals
Scheduler Performance Optimisation
Synchronization Primitives
Inter-Process Communication (IPC)
Performance Analysis
