Engineering Manager, Linux Team

About the role

Lead and Mentor: Manage a high-performing team of kernel and systems engineers, fostering a culture of "collaboration-first" and continuous knowledge sharing both internally and with the global open-source community.
Own the OS Lifecycle: Oversee the end-to-end delivery of the Linux Kernel and core OS components. Your goal is a fully automated continuous delivery pipeline that moves from merge to 100% production in less than 30 days.
Drive Technical Vision: Steer the Cloudflare kernel development roadmap. You will balance the need for cutting-edge features with the absolute requirements of production stability, security, and performance.
Drive Upstream Advocacy: Promote a "minimal patch" philosophy by ensuring your team is a top contributor to the Linux Kernel. You will support engineers in becoming upstream maintainers for critical subsystems.
Drive Cross-Functional Collaboration: Act as a consultant to hardware and service teams, helping them onboard new hardware and optimize workloads for our OS. You’ll lead a "virtual team" environment where any engineer at Cloudflare can contribute to the kernel.
Drive Innovation & Debugging: Tackle the "impossible" challenges of kernel-level debugging. You will lead the development of automated systems that collect critical telemetry when a system crashes, even when traditional debuggers cannot run.
Measure Success: Use DORA metrics and team-specific capabilities - such as the "time to fix a kernel issue" and upstream commit volume - to track and improve team impact.

Responsibilities

Manage and Mentor: Manage a high-performing team of kernel and systems engineers, fostering a culture of "collaboration-first" and continuous knowledge sharing both internally and with the global open-source community.
Own the OS Lifecycle: Oversee the end-to-end delivery of the Linux Kernel and core OS components. Your goal is a fully automated continuous delivery pipeline that moves from merge to 100% production in less than 30 days.
Drive Technical Vision: Steer the Cloudflare kernel development roadmap. You will balance the need for cutting-edge features with the absolute requirements of production stability, security, and performance.
Drive Upstream Advocacy: Promote a "minimal patch" philosophy by ensuring your team is a top contributor to the Linux Kernel. You will support engineers in becoming upstream maintainers for critical subsystems.
Drive Cross-Functional Collaboration: Act as a consultant to hardware and service teams, helping them onboard new hardware and optimize workloads for our OS. You’ll lead a "virtual team" environment where any engineer at Cloudflare can contribute to the kernel.
Drive Innovation & Debugging: Tackle the "impossible" challenges of kernel-level debugging. You will lead the development of automated systems that collect critical telemetry when a system crashes, even when traditional debuggers cannot run.
Measure Success: Use DORA metrics and team-specific capabilities - such as the "time to fix a kernel issue" and upstream commit volume - to track and improve team impact.

Requirements

Systems Leadership: 5+ years of experience managing engineering teams, ideally in low-level systems, kernel development, or large-scale infrastructure environments.
Low-Level Expertise: A deep understanding of Linux Kernel internals, x86/ARM architecture, and OS design fundamentals. You should be comfortable discussing memory management, schedulers, and network stacks.
Automation Mindset: Experience building or managing CI/CD pipelines for foundational software. You believe that "toil" is a bug and automation is the feature.
Open Source Pedigree: A proven track record of engaging with the open-source community. You understand the nuances of upstreaming and how to navigate community dynamics effectively.
Operational Empathy: An understanding of the unique challenges of a global "reboot-limited" production environment. You prioritize stability and have experience with pre-production QA and synthetic workload evaluation.
Strategic Communication: The ability to translate complex kernel-level obstacles into actionable business insights for stakeholders across the company.
Resilience: You aren't intimidated by the "impossible." Whether it's a non-reproducible race condition or an unwelcoming upstream thread, you lead your team through the challenge with a pragmatic, solution-oriented mindset.

Qualifications

Compensation: Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location. For New York City and California (excluding Bay Area) based hires: Estimated annual salary of $170,000 - $275,000. For Bay Area based hires: Estimated annual salary of $190,000 - $303,000.
Equity: This role is eligible to participate in Cloudflare’s equity plan.

Benefits

Cloudflare offers a comprehensive benefits package including health insurance, retirement savings plans, paid time off, and more. Details will be provided during the onboarding process.

Schedule

The role is full-time and remote-friendly, with flexibility to work from anywhere within the specified locations.

Pay

The estimated annual salary range for this role is $170,000 - $303,000, depending on location and experience.