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About the Role

Fastly's Kernel and Host Networking team builds and ships the Linux kernel that runs on every server in our global edge network. As a Staff engineer, you will own technical problems end to end, spanning networking, XDP and eBPF, memory, performance, and hardware enablement. The work also spans layers, ensuring correctness under change in a distributed system.

Responsibilities

Set technical direction for kernel projects and own them end to end.
Mentor engineers on the team.
Take new servers, CPUs and NICs from first boot to full fleet.
Improve datapath and transport performance with XDP, eBPF and protocol work.
Debug problems that cross layers with application teams.
Develop and maintain kernel changes and Fastly kernel modules.
Reduce our private delta by upstreaming.
Ensure 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, find root cause and ship the fix.
Own and improve the kernel release process and its signals.
Join the on-call rotation, lead the kernel side of incidents and drive follow-up actions to closure.

Requirements

7+ years of related engineering experience, including substantial production C.
3 years of experience 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.

Skills

Production C
Linux kernel development
KASAN
kdump
ftrace
perf
bpftrace
Scheduler
Memory management
EEVDF
memcg
Kernel patch stack management
Upstream community engagement
Linux network stack
TCP/IP
sk_buff lifecycle
qdiscs
NIC drivers
XDP
eBPF
Staged rollouts
Canaries
Kill switches
Observability
Postmortems
Distributed systems
Control plane and datapath consistency
Partial failure handling
Safe configuration rollout
Upstream kernel contributions
Subsystem maintainership
Transport protocols (QUIC, TCP, ECN, L4S, MASQUE)
Hardware enablement (AMD EPYC, Intel platforms)
NIC drivers (mlx5, ice, i40e)
Load balancing systems
Traffic steering systems
CDN environments
Large edge network environments
Container networking
Network namespaces
veth
cgroups
eBPF-based CNI datapaths

Location

Remote (United States)
Hybrid (United States)
New York, NY
San Francisco, CA
Denver, CO

Work Type

Remote
Hybrid
Full-time

Experience Level

Staff
7+ years related engineering experience
3 years leading technical projects

Education Level

Formal CS education is not required; demonstrable experience is what matters.

Salary/Compensations

$211,370 to $253,644

Benefits

Medical insurance
Dental insurance
Vision insurance
Family planning support
Mental health support
Employee Assistance Program
Life insurance
Disability insurance
Accident insurance
Flexible Vacation policy
18 days of accrued paid sick leave
401(k) with company match
Employee Stock Purchase Program
11 paid local holidays (for 2026)
12 paid company wellness days (for 2026)

About the Company

Fastly helps people stay better connected with the things they love.
Fastly's edge cloud platform enables customers to create great digital experiences quickly, securely, and reliably by processing, serving, and securing our customers’ applications as close to their end-users as possible — at the edge of the Internet.
The platform is designed to take advantage of the modern internet, to be programmable, and to support agile software development.
Fastly's customers include many of the world’s most prominent companies, including GitHub, Yelp, Paramount, and JetBlue.
We're building a more trustworthy Internet.
We have a huge impact. Fastly is a small company with a big reach.
We support a growing number of open source projects and initiatives.
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’.
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.

Equal Opportunity

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.
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.