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Performance Engineer, Kernel and Memory

Cloudflare· Engineering
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Hybrid (Austin, US; New York, NY; Washington DC; European Cloudflare Hubs)full-timePosted 2w ago

About the role

Performance-focused role focused on Linux kernel memory-management performance and scalability at Cloudflare, with upstream contribution and instrumentation work to improve memory efficiency at scale.

Responsibilities

  • Diagnose and fix performance and scalability bottlenecks in the Linux kernel memory-management subsystem, informed by real production telemetry at scale.
  • Land your work upstream. Expect MM changes to go to mainline first and continue maintainership and review work.
  • Build and extend low-overhead kernel instrumentation (tracepoints, BPF, perf) to measure before changes and prove impact afterward.
  • Partner with kernel, networking, storage, and product engineers to turn observed system behavior into concrete MM improvements.
  • Set technical direction for how Cloudflare uses, tunes, and evolves kernel memory management as utilization increases.

Qualifications

  • Deep expertise in the Linux kernel memory-management subsystem: page allocator, virtual memory and memory mapping, reclaim, locking and concurrency.
  • Track record of upstream Linux contribution, ideally including maintainership or sustained work in MM or an adjacent subsystem.
  • Strong systems programming in C, with judgment to make high-risk changes to shared infrastructure safely.
  • Ability to dive deep into a complex codebase while keeping fleet-wide perspective and owning problems and outcomes.
  • Clear communication with engineers across many teams.

Skills

Required:Linux kernel memory-managementUpstream Linux contributionC programmingProblem ownershipCross-team communication

Benefits

  • (Not explicitly listed in the description)
Last updated Oct 21, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

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