Senior Systems Engineer, CKS Performance

CoreWeave is The Essential Cloud for AI. Built for pioneers by pioneers, CoreWeave delivers a platform of technology, tools, and teams that enables innovators to build and scale AI with confidence.

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Systems Engineering team, you will be the kernel expert who traces complex, ambiguous failures in Kubernetes, pods, and containers back to their root cause in the Linux kernel , and fixes them there.

Responsibilities:

• Debug and fix complex issues that span the kernel/Kubernetes boundary , pods stuck or evicted for unclear reasons, cgroup memory/CPU accounting that doesn't add up, namespace or mount issues that only manifest under real workloads at scale.
• Go deep into cgroups (v1 and v2), namespaces, the OOM killer, and the CPU scheduler (CFS) to explain and fix behavior that looks like a Kubernetes bug but is actually a kernel one , and the reverse.
• Debug kernel crashes, panics, oopses, and hangs using tools like crash, gdb, and kdump; identify root cause and drive it to a fix.
• Work across the container runtime stack (containerd, runc, the kubelet, the CRI) to understand how kernel behavior surfaces as pod- and container-level symptoms.
• Develop and, where applicable, upstream Linux kernel patches , to the mainline kernel, container runtimes, or Kubernetes itself.
• Build diagnostics and tooling for kernel- and cgroup-level observability, so the next issue like this is faster to find.
• Partner with hardware, platform, HPC, and Fleet teams to ensure kernel and container-runtime readiness for production workloads, and provide kernel-level expertise during incident response and root-cause investigations.

Requirements:

• 5+ years of professional experience in Linux kernel engineering, systems-level development, or a closely adjacent discipline.
• Deep understanding of kernel internals , memory management, process/thread scheduling, cgroups, namespaces, and the networking or storage stack.
• Hands-on experience with cgroups (v1 and/or v2) and namespaces, and how they underpin container isolation and resource limits.
• Experience debugging kernel crashes, panics, hangs, and dumps using tools like crash, gdb, or kdump.
• Strong C programming skills, with the ability to write maintainable, upstream-quality code.
• Working knowledge of the container and Kubernetes stack , containerd, runc, the kubelet, and the CRI , and how kernel behavior shows up at that layer.
• Skilled at cross-domain debugging: identifying whether a root cause lies in the kernel, the container runtime, or the orchestration layer above it.

Preferred:

• Experience upstreaming patches to the Linux kernel, containerd, runc, or Kubernetes.
• Familiarity with eBPF for kernel-level tracing, observability, or enforcement.
• Experience with kernel networking (TCP/IP, RDMA/RoCE) or storage subsystems at scale.
• Experience debugging GPU/DPU driver or hardware-enablement issues at the kernel level.
• Background in HPC or large-scale distributed systems.
• Contributions to the Linux kernel, containerd, runc, or Kubernetes projects.

Benefits:

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 100% paid for by CoreWeave
• Company-paid Life Insurance
• Voluntary supplemental life insurance
• Short and long-term disability insurance
• Flexible Spending Account
• Health Savings Account
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Ability to Participate in Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)
• Mental Wellness Benefits through Spring Health
• Family-Forming support provided by Carrot
• Paid Parental Leave
• Flexible, full-service childcare support with Kinside
• 401(k) with a generous employer match
• Flexible PTO
• Catered lunch each day in our office and data center locations
• A casual work environment
• A work culture focused on innovative disruption