System Software Engineer, Linux Kernel and Device Drivers - Mountain View, CA, United States
$120,000 - $250,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 10 July 2026 by the employer.
About the role
MatX is seeking a System Software Engineer to design, implement, and validate the host system software stack for AI silicon. The host system software team owns components from Linux kernel drivers up through node and cluster management, as well as the BMC/OpenBMC firmware stack.
What you'll do
- Architect, design, and implement the Linux kernel driver stack for MatX AI accelerators (PCIe endpoint devices), including memory management, DMA, interrupt handling, and command submission paths. - Build low-level userspace libraries sitting on top of the driver, covering ioctl/sysfs interfaces, memory mapping, and direct chip access utilities. - Test and validate chip features on pre-silicon platforms, including software simulation, emulation, and FPGA environments. - Drive first-silicon bring-up with hardware, BMC firmware, and platform engineers, debugging issues spanning RTL, firmware, kernel, and userspace. - Profile and optimize the host I/O path across PCIe throughput, DMA efficiency, interrupt latency, and OS overheads. - Write prototype code, debug utilities, unit and regression tests, and bring-up tooling to exercise silicon directly.
What you'll need
- BS or higher in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent practical experience, with 8+ years in low-level systems software. - Hands-on Linux kernel development experience writing and shipping device drivers, ideally for PCIe devices. - Strong C programming skills in userspace and kernel space. - Ability to read hardware datasheets and register definitions to program devices directly. - Deep understanding of computer architecture and OS internals, including MMIO, DMA, interrupts, IOMMU, memory hierarchy, processes/threads, and virtual memory. - Experience debugging complex hardware/software interaction issues with limited visibility.
Nice to have
- Experience with pre-silicon validation environments (simulation, emulation, FPGA prototyping). - First-silicon or new-platform bring-up experience for accelerators, NICs, or SoCs. - Familiarity with SR-IOV, dma-buf, peer-to-peer PCIe, or VFIO. - Kernel performance tuning and profiling experience (perf, ftrace, eBPF). - Exposure to BMC/host interaction paths (in-band vs. out-of-band device access, sideband interfaces such as I2C/SMBus). - Rust for systems programming.
This role has been open 101 days — well above the 60-day median for Systems Software Engineering roles.
Systems Software Engineering · Systems Software
|
Open roles in category
687
|
Median days open
60 d
|
Median salary
$212k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, and who else is hiring
| Metric | MatX | All employers we track in this specialty (687 roles · 72 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 8 | 687 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 35 | 6222 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 81 d | 60 d (+21 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $212k |
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 171 open roles · median 81 d
- NVIDIA · 130 open roles · median 43 d
- AMD · 64 open roles · median 49 d
- Mobileye · 24 open roles · median 79 d
- Broadcom · 23 open roles · median 55 d
- Arm Holdings · 20 open roles · median 117 d
How we counted: 687 open Systems Software Engineering (Systems Software) roles from 72 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 20 Oct 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.