Principal Software Engineer - Linux Kernel Performance
Company: Akamai
Location: United States (Remote)
Salary: $169,300 - $304,700 a year
Type: Full-time
Remote: Yes
Posted: 2026-06-03
About this role
Do you have a passion for making systems run as efficiently as possible?
Does it bother you when they don't?
Join our innovative team
Our Linux Performance team is a specialized group that looks to improve the performance and efficiency of Akamai's Intelligent Platform, both virtualized and bare metal. It is part of our larger Linux Engineering team, which provides the Linux kernel and operating system innovation for the Akamai global distributed network composed of 300,000+ servers deployed in 1000+ networks and 100+ countries.
Shape the future of performance at Akamai
You can make a significant impact on Akamai's business. A successful candidate will seek challenges, are passionate for learning, and have demonstrated ability to pose and solve difficult problems. The job requires solid system design, solid programming and debugging skills, an obsession with code quality, and independence. You must have a passion to get things done quickly and correctly.
As a Principal Software Engineer, you will be responsible for:
- Analyzing system performance, identify problems, design, develop, and implement solutions
- Extending metrics collection and create visualizations to better quantify systems performance
- Building tooling to help identify system performance problems faster
- Training other Akamai engineers to identify performance issues
- Working with teams across the company to implement your solutions
Do what you love
To be successful in this role you will:
- Have 12 years of relevant experience and a Bachelor's degree or equivalent
- Have extensive programming experience in C, as well experience in Python, Bash, or Perl
- Possess a deep understanding of the Linux kernel and computer system architectures
- Have experience with virtualization technologies (Qemu, KVM) and hardware offload technologies (VDPA, DPDK, SR-IOV)
- Have experience with performance analysis tools like Linux perf, bcc tools, BPF, etc
- Have experience with concurren...