Engineering Manager, Linux Team

Role details

About Us At Cloudflare, we are on a mission to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the world’s largest networks that powers millions of websites and other Internet properties for customers ranging from individual bloggers to SMBs to Fortune 500 companies. Cloudflare protects and accelerates any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare all have web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Company Cultures list and ranked among the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company. At Cloudflare, we’re not looking for people who wait for a polished roadmap; we’re looking for the builders who see the cracks in the Internet that everyone else has simply learned to live with. We value candidates who have the instinct to spot a "normalized" problem and the AI-native curiosity to create a solution using the latest tools. Our culture is built on iteration, leveraging AI to ship faster today to make it better tomorrow, while ensuring that every improvement, no matter how small, is shared across the team to lift everyone up. If you’re the type of person who values curiosity over bureaucracy, and that AI is a partner in solving tough problems to keep the Internet moving forward, you’ll fit right in. Available Locations Austin, US New York, US San Francisco, US Responsibilities 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. 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. 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. Innovate 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. Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience 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. 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. What Makes Cloudflare Special? We’re not just a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company. We’re a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company with a soul. Fundamental to our mission to help build a better Internet is protecting the free and open Internet. Project Galileo : Since 2014, we've equipped more than 2,400 journalism and civil society organizations in 111 countries with powerful tools to defend themselves against attacks that would otherwise censor their work, technology already used by Cloudflare’s enterprise customers--at no cost. Athenian Project : In 2017, we created the Athenian Project to ensure that state and local governments have the highest level of protection and reliability for free, so that their constituents have access to election information and voter registration. Since the project, we've provided services to more than 425 local government election websites in 33 states. 1.1.1.1 : We released 1.1.1.1 to help fix the foundation of the Internet by building a faster, more secure and privacy-centric public DNS resolver. This is available publicly for everyone to use - it is the first consumer-focused service Cloudflare has ever rele