Senior Linux Systems Engineer

Orange Barrel Media•Columbus, OH

About The Position

We run an established Ubuntu Core-based platform and display-server estate deployed across a large fleet of devices, along with the applications that run on it. We're looking for an experienced OS internals engineer to own the platform: keep it secure, stable, and performant, evolve it where it makes sense, and make sure changes reach every unit reliably. You'll inherit systems that work and have room to improve them, but we value incremental, well-reasoned change over rewrites. You'll lead our infrastructure function and provide technical direction for the team.

Requirements

8+ years running production Linux systems, with real depth in kernel, boot, init, storage, and networking internals
Experience deploying and updating Linux at fleet scale, ideally on Ubuntu Core: snap packaging and confinement, channel and track management, transactional updates and rollback, and a fleet management tool (Landscape or similar)
Track record of keeping production applications stable and fast on Linux, including profiling and performance debugging
Strong security background: you read advisories, understand attack surface, and patch without breaking things
Hands-on experience with display servers and GPU stacks beyond the desktop use case
Judgment about when to change something and when to leave it alone
Comfortable with scripting (Bash, Python) and observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, or similar)
Prior experience leading or mentoring engineers
Clear written communication

Nice To Haves

Experience with IoT or edge device fleets: constrained hardware, intermittent connectivity, remote provisioning and recovery
Experience building and publishing snap packages, including confinement design and interface declarations
Experience building custom Ubuntu Core images, gadget and kernel snaps, or brand stores
Familiarity with other immutable OS models (ostree, NixOS)
Kernel module or driver debugging experience
Enough cloud familiarity (AWS, GCP, or similar) to partner well with cloud-focused engineers
Compliance exposure (SOC 2, ISO 27001, CIS benchmarks)

Responsibilities

Own the Linux platform end to end: kernel and base snap versions, patching cadence, image management, end-of-life planning
Run deployment and update pipelines that push OS, driver, application, and configuration changes safely across a large number of units: channels and tracks, staged rollouts, canaries, health checks, rollback
Maintain the display-server layer (Ubuntu Frame/Mir, Wayland, X11, GPU drivers, remote display) on embedded and server-class hardware
Ensure the applications running on the platform are stable under real-world load: resource limits, service supervision via snapd and systemd, restart behavior, dependency management
Profile and tune at the OS/application boundary: CPU scheduling, memory pressure, I/O, GPU utilization, network throughput
Define health and performance baselines, set up alerting on regressions, and lead root-cause analysis when things degrade
Own the OS security posture: hardening baselines, access control, privilege separation, secure boot, disk encryption
Use snap confinement (AppArmor, seccomp, interfaces) as the primary isolation boundary for applications
Run vulnerability management: CVE monitoring and triage, patch prioritization, and coordinated rollout across the fleet
Reduce attack surface at the application layer: least privilege, dependency and supply-chain hygiene
Maintain audit logging and integrity checks; support incident response and any compliance requirements
Identify where the platform should evolve and make the case with clear tradeoffs and migration paths
Keep documentation, runbooks, and fleet tooling accurate and usable by others
Manage and mentor engineers on the team; set priorities across OS, fleet, application, and cloud reliability work
Be the escalation point for anything below the application code itself