Kernel Developer – KernelCare ELS Team

About the role

We are looking for a Kernel Developer to join the KernelCare Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS) team at CloudLinux/TuxCare. The position is fully remote and focuses on back‑porting security fixes and critical patches to legacy Linux kernels used by enterprise customers.

Key responsibilities

• Research upstream security advisories (CVE) and bug fixes, assess impact on legacy kernels.
• Manually back‑port kernel patches to older RPM‑based and Debian‑based distributions.
• Resolve merge conflicts between upstream changes and target kernel codebases.
• Build and rebuild kernel source and binary packages in reproducible environments for both RPM and Debian ecosystems.
• Validate patched kernels through build tests, runtime tests and regression analysis.
• Improve internal tooling and automation pipelines using Python, Go and shell scripts.
• Leverage AI‑assisted development tools to accelerate patch preparation while ensuring rigorous verification.
• Document technical decisions, participate in code reviews and collaborate across time zones.

Required profile

• Strong proficiency in C and hands‑on Linux debugging.
• Commercial experience in Linux kernel development, including patching, back‑porting or debugging.
• Solid knowledge of Git and GNU build tools (make, autotools) and standard Linux developer utilities.
• Experience building Linux kernels or distribution packages for RPM and Debian based systems.

Required skills

• C programming
• Linux kernel development and debugging
• Git version control
• GNU make and autotools
• Shell scripting
• Python
• Go
• RPM and Debian packaging
• Reproducible build environments
• AI‑assisted development tools