Engineering Manager Linux Team

• Lead and Mentor: Manage a high-performing team of kernel and systems engineers fostering a culture of "collaboration-first" and continuous knowledge sharing both internally and with the global open-source community.
• Own the OS Lifecycle: Oversee the end-to-end delivery of the Linux Kernel and core OS components. Your goal is a fully automated continuous delivery pipeline that moves from merge to 100% production in less than 30 days.
• Drive Technical Vision: Steer the Cloudflare kernel development roadmap. You will balance the need for cutting-edge features with the absolute requirements of production stability security and performance.
• Upstream Advocacy: Promote a "minimal patch" philosophy by ensuring your team is a top contributor to the Linux Kernel. You will support engineers in becoming upstream maintainers for critical subsystems.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Act as a consultant to hardware and service teams helping them onboard new hardware and optimize workloads for our OS. You'll lead a "virtual team" environment where any engineer at Cloudflare can contribute to the kernel.
• Innovate Debugging: Tackle the "impossible" challenges of kernel-level debugging. You will lead the development of automated systems that collect critical telemetry when a system crashes even when traditional debuggers cannot run.
• Measure Success: Use DORA metrics and team-specific capabilities - such as the "time to fix a kernel issue" and upstream commit volume - to track and improve team impact.

• Systems Leadership: 5+ years of experience managing engineering teams ideally in low-level systems kernel development or large-scale infrastructure environments.
• Low-Level Expertise: A deep understanding of Linux Kernel internals x86/ARM architecture and OS design fundamentals. You should be comfortable discussing memory management schedulers and network stacks.
• Automation Mindset: Experience building or managing CI/CD pipelines for foundational software. You believe that "toil" is a bug and automation is the feature.
• Open Source Pedigree: A proven track record of engaging with the open-source community. You understand the nuances of upstreaming and how to navigate community dynamics effectively.
• Operational Empathy: An understanding of the unique challenges of a global "reboot-limited" production environment. You prioritize stability and have experience with pre-production QA and synthetic workload evaluation.
• Strategic Communication: The ability to translate complex kernel-level obstacles into actionable business insights for stakeholders across the company.
• Resilience: You aren't intimidated by the "impossible." Whether it's a non-reproducible race condition or an unwelcoming upstream thread you lead your team through the challenge with a pragmatic solution-oriented mindset.

• For New York City and California (excluding Bay Area) based hires: Estimated annual salary of $170000 - $275000.
• For Bay Area based hires: Estimated annual salary of $190000 - $303000

What We Do

Cloudflare Inc. (NYSE: NET) is the leading connectivity cloud company on a mission to help build a better Internet. It empowers organizations to make their employees applications and networks faster and more secure everywhere while reducing complexity and cost. Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud delivers the most full-featured unified platform of cloud-native products and developer tools so any organization can gain the control they need to work develop and accelerate their business. Powered by one of the world’s largest and most interconnected networks Cloudflare blocks billions of threats online for its customers every day. It is trusted by millions of organizations – from the largest brands to entrepreneurs and small businesses to nonprofits humanitarian groups and governments across the globe.

Why Work With Us

Cloudflare employees come from all walks of life. We are mission-driven and our team is energized by a collaborative creative environment that celebrates our differences and fosters new ways to grow together.

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