Ubuntu Linux Kernel Test Engineer

About the role

Canonical’s Kernel Team is seeking a Test Engineer to own the testing strategy and infrastructure for Ubuntu Linux kernels. You will design, develop and maintain test plans that ensure functional correctness, stability, performance and security across many concurrently supported kernel versions.

Key responsibilities

• Design, develop and maintain comprehensive test plans covering functional, stability, performance and security aspects of Ubuntu kernels.
• Build and evolve automated test frameworks, including stress testing, fuzzing, code‑coverage analysis and regression detection.
• Maintain long‑lived test suites and CI/CD pipelines that scale across multiple kernel versions and architectures.
• Execute performance benchmarking, stress tests and fuzzing using tools such as syzkaller, Trinity or custom harnesses.
• Collaborate with globally distributed kernel engineers, contribute to upstream test suites and document methodologies and results.

Required profile

• Strong programming experience in Python.
• Familiarity with Linux kernel internals and subsystems.
• Experience with system‑level testing frameworks (LTP, kselftest, xfstests, stress‑ng, fio) and CI/CD systems (Jenkins, GitHub CI).
• Solid background with Git and Linux systems administration/automation.
• Professional written and spoken English and ability to travel twice a year for company events.

Required skills

• Python
• LTP, kselftest, xfstests, stress‑ng, fio
• Jenkins, GitHub CI
• Git
• Syzkaller, Trinity, AFL (kernel fuzzing)
• gcov, kcov, LLVM source‑based coverage
• ftrace, perf, bpftrace, eBPF
• sparse, smatch, Coccinelle
• failslab, fail_make_request (fault injection)
• Ubuntu/Debian packaging, Snap
• KVM, QEMU, container runtimes
• AWS, GCP, Azure, OpenStack

What we offer

• Fully remote working environment (remote‑first since 2004).
• Personal learning and development budget of $2,000 USD per year.
• Annual compensation review, bonuses and recognition rewards.
• Annual holiday leave, parental leave and employee assistance programme.
• Opportunities to travel for sprints and company events, with travel upgrades.