What You'll Do
Set technical direction for kernel projects, own them end to end from problem statement to fleet rollout, and mentor engineers on the team
Take new servers, CPUs and NICs from first boot to full fleet: drivers, IRQ affinity, RSS and queue layout on high core count hosts
Improve datapath and transport performance with XDP, eBPF and protocol work based on IETF specifications
Debug problems that cross layers with application teams, such as MTU behavior, cgroup memory accounting and packet filtering
Develop and maintain kernel changes and Fastly kernel modules on our long term kernel line, and reduce our private delta by upstreaming
Make sure state pushed from control planes to eBPF and XDP programs is applied, verified and safe to roll back
Own kernel health in production: triage crashes, WARNs and regressions across the fleet, find the root cause and ship the fix
Own and improve the kernel release process and the signals behind it: CI, bake, canary, staged rollout and rollback across thousands of servers, plus crash metrics and drift detection that fire before customers notice
Join the on-call rotation, lead the kernel side of incidents and drive follow-up actions to closure
What We're Looking For
7+ years of related engineering experience, including substantial production C, with 3 of those years leading technical projects
Production Linux kernel development, including debugging use-after-free, refcount and leak bugs with KASAN, kdump, ftrace, perf or bpftrace
Working knowledge of the scheduler and memory management (EEVDF, memcg)
Experience managing a kernel patch stack and working with upstream communities
Solid understanding of the Linux network stack (TCP/IP, sk_buff lifecycle, qdiscs, NIC drivers) and XDP or eBPF, with deep expertise in at least one of these areas
Operational discipline: staged rollouts, canaries, kill switches, observability, postmortems and closing action items
Understanding of distributed systems: control plane and datapath consistency, partial failure and safe config rollout at fleet scale
Ability to design broadly scoped work and drive it across teams
We’ll be super impressed if you have experience in any of these
Upstream kernel contributions or subsystem maintainership
Deep Knowledge of Transport protocols from IETF RFCs: QUIC, TCP, ECN and L4S, MASQUE
Hardware enablement on AMD EPYC or Intel platforms, and NIC drivers such as mlx5, ice or i40e
Load balancing or traffic steering systems
CDN or large edge network environments
Container networking: network namespaces, veth, cgroups, and eBPF-based CNI datapaths
Work Hours
This position requires availability during core business hours and participation in an on-call rotation.
Work Location(s) & Travel Requirements
This position is open to remote and hybrid work locations in the United States. Our US Fastly offices are located in:
New York, NY
San Francisco, CA
Denver, CO
This position may require travel as required by your role or requested by your manager.
SF / LA Fair Chance Ordinance Statement
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Salary
The estimated salary range for this position in the US is $211,370 to $253,644.
Starting salary may vary based on permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as experience, skills, qualifications, and location.
This role may be eligible to participate in Fastly’s equity and discretionary bonus programs.
Benefits
We care about you. Fastly works hard to create a positive environment for our employees, and we think your life outside of work is important too. We support our teams with great benefits that start on the first day of your employment with Fastly. Curious about our offerings?
We offer a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance. Family planning, mental health support along with Employee Assistance Program, Insurance (Life, Disability, and Accident), a Flexible Vacation policy and up to 18 days of accrued paid sick leave are there to help support our employees. We also offer 401(k) (including company match) and an Employee Stock Purchase Program. For 2026, we offer 11 paid local holidays, 12 paid company wellness days.
AI Statement
To ensure a fair and equitable interview process for everyone, the use of AI technologies—including real-time transcription tools, automated scripts, AI copilots, or external assistants—is strictly prohibited during the interview process unless explicitly authorized by the company in advance. Unauthorized use of AI tools may result in disqualification.
Why Fastly?
We have a huge impact. Fastly is a small company with a big reach. Not only do our customers have a tremendous user base, but we also support a growing number of open source projects and initiatives. Outside of code, employees are encouraged to share causes close to their heart with others so we can help lend a supportive hand.
We value diversity. Growing and maintaining our inclusive and diverse team matters to us. We are committed to being a company where our employees feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work and have the ability to be successful -- every day.
We are passionate. Fastly is chock full of passionate people and we’re not ‘one size fits all’. Fastly employs authors, pilots, skiers, parents (of humans and animals), makeup geeks, coffee connoisseurs, and more. We love employees for who they are and what they are passionate about.
We’re always looking for humble, sharp, and creative folks to join the Fastly team. If you think you might be a fit please apply! A fully completed application and resume or CV are required when applying.
All job applications must be submitted through our official careers site at www.fastly.com/about/careers. We will never request sensitive information, such as your Social Security number, bank account or credit card information during the application process. All official communication will come from an @fastly.com or @recruiting.fastly.com email address.
Fastly is committed to ensuring equal employment opportunity and to providing employees with a safe and welcoming work environment free of discrimination and harassment. Our employment decisions are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, family or parental status, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.
Consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and federal or state disability laws, Fastly will provide reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact your Recruiter, or the Fastly Employee Relations team at candidateaccommodations@fastly.com or 501-287-4901.
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