System Software Engineer, Linux Kernel and Device Drivers

MatX•Mountain View, CA

36d•$120,000 - $475,000•Hybrid

About The Position

MatX's mission is to make the world’s best AI models run as efficiently as allowed by physics, bringing the world years ahead in AI quality and availability. MatX is seeking System Software Engineer to join our team as we create best-in-class silicon for high-performance and sustainable GenAI. Successful candidates for these roles will be responsible for delivering performant and functionally accurate silicon for MatX products across compute, memory management. High-speed connectivity and other key technologies. The MatX host system software team owns everything that makes our AI silicon and systems usable: from Linux kernel drivers up through node and cluster management. The team also co-owns the BMC/OpenBMC firmware stack, with dedicated firmware engineers, so host software and out-of-band management are designed together rather than bolted together. We're looking for self-driven engineers who can take a hardware spec and a register map and just start building — prototype drivers, low-level utilities that talk directly to the chip, daemons, and tooling — with minimal hand-holding. Each engineer on this team has a primary focus area, but ownership of overlapping components is shared, and you should expect (and want) to venture across the stack.

Requirements

BS or higher in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent practical experience, with 8+ years in low-level systems software
Strong hands-on Linux kernel development experience — you've written and shipped device drivers, ideally for PCIe devices
Strong C programming skills; comfortable in userspace and kernel space
Able to read hardware datasheets and register definitions and program a device from them, without waiting for someone to explain the hardware
Deep understanding of computer architecture and OS internals: MMIO, DMA, interrupts, IOMMU, memory hierarchy, processes/threads, virtual memory
Experienced debugging complex hardware/software interaction issues with limited visibility
Self-driven and comfortable with ambiguity — able to own a component from blank page through bring-up and validation on a small, fast-moving team

Nice To Haves

Experience with pre-silicon validation environments (simulation, emulation, FPGA prototyping)
First-silicon or new-platform bring-up experience for accelerators, NICs, or SoCs
Familiarity with SR-IOV, dma-buf, peer-to-peer PCIe, or VFIO
Kernel performance tuning and profiling experience (perf, ftrace, eBPF)
Exposure to BMC/host interaction paths (e.g., in-band vs. out-of-band device access, sideband interfaces such as I2C/SMBus)
Rust for systems programming

Responsibilities

Architect, design, and implement the Linux kernel driver stack for MatX's AI accelerators (PCIe endpoint devices), including memory management, DMA, interrupt handling, and command submission paths
Build the low-level userspace libraries that sit directly on top of the driver — ioctl/sysfs interfaces, memory mapping, direct chip access utilities
Test and validate early chip features on pre-silicon platforms: software simulation, emulation, and FPGA environments — often as the first software to ever touch a new hardware feature
Write quick prototype code, debug utilities, and bring-up tooling to exercise the chip directly, well before polished production software exists
Drive first-silicon bring-up side by side with hardware, BMC firmware, and platform engineers, debugging issues that span RTL, firmware, kernel, and userspace
Profile and optimize the host I/O path: PCIe throughput, DMA efficiency, interrupt latency, and OS overheads
Deliver unit and regression tests for kernel and library components
Expose driver-level device state and error information in ways the platform telemetry and management layers (and, where relevant, the BMC) can consume
Influence next-generation chip architecture by feeding software requirements back into silicon design
Share ownership of adjacent components with teammates — e.g., contributing to the chip initialization and telemetry daemons that build on your driver interfaces

Benefits

A Stake in our success A flexible cash equity compensation mix that fits your needs
Company subsidized Health, Dental, Vision, and Life insurance
Pre-tax Health Savings Accounts with generous company contribution
4 weeks paid time off (accrued)
12 company holidays
3 weeks remote/flexible work per year
Up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave, regardless of your path to parenthood
$1,500 yearly towards your professional development e.g. conferences, courses, and other learning opportunities
Team Lunches, quarterly off-sites, and regular town halls
401K and/or Roth IRA, with 5% company contribution, even if you don’t!
Pre-tax spend accounts for medical, dental/vision, dependent care, parking, and transit expenses
Commute on Us: For those commuting up to 1 hour, put your rideshare cost on our company card and reclaim the drive-time to get work done!
$50 per month to use on the perks you care about most
Remote Perks: We work remotely Monday & Friday, supported by home-tech setup, and remote wifi expense reimbursement
Company-subsidized Medical (Kaiser or Anthem) for employees & dependents
Guardian Dental and Vision insurances for employee & dependents
life insurance (employee only)
HSA and FSA offerings via Lively
100% company-paid life insurance (up to $300K)
long-term disability insurances
$1500 Professional Development Budget (per year)
MatX provides onsite team lunch & dinner Monday - Friday, with your choice of ordering via WeBox, Specialty’s or via our reimbursement system
Commute on our company Uber account, or reimburse your train rides. Either way, we pay 100% for your daily commute.
$50/mo to use on the perk you value most
$35/mo for cellular and $40/mo for wifi
100% paid mental health benefit via SpringHealth and Guardian EAP
10 weeks pregnancy disability leave
flexible return-to-work hours
Benepass reproductive health & parental benefit
Up to $20K/month plus a dedicated internal AI Tooling Team to support your productivity