System Software Engineer - Linux Kernel and Device Drivers
About The Position
MatX is building best-in-class silicon for high-performance and sustainable GenAI, aiming to make the world’s best AI models run as efficiently as allowed by physics. The System Software Engineer 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 their 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. Successful candidates will be self-driven engineers capable of taking a hardware spec and a register map to build prototype drivers, low-level utilities, daemons, and tooling with minimal supervision. Engineers will have a primary focus area but will share ownership of overlapping components and are expected to work across the entire stack.
Requirements
- BS or higher in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
- 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
- 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
- Authorized to work in the United States
- Ability to work from offices in Mountain View Tuesdays-Thursdays
- Capacity to perform job functions in compliance with U.S. export control laws without obtaining a license from U.S. export control authorities
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
- Write quick prototype code, debug utilities, and bring-up tooling to exercise the chip directly
- 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 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
- Flexible cash equity compensation mix
- 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
- $1,500 yearly towards professional development (conferences, courses, etc.)
- Team Lunches
- Quarterly off-sites
- Regular town halls
- 401K and/or Roth IRA, with 5% company contribution
- Pre-tax spend accounts for medical, dental/vision, dependent care, parking, and transit expenses
- $50 per month for perks
- Home-tech setup
- Remote wifi expense reimbursement
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
