Ubuntu Linux Kernel Test Engineer

Role Overview

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

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain comprehensive test plans for Ubuntu Linux kernels (functional, stability, performance, security)
• Build and improve automated test infrastructure for continuous kernel quality validation across versions and architectures
• Maintain long-lived regression/stability test suites over years of maintenance
• Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines for continuous validation
• Run and analyze performance benchmarking and regression detection across kernel releases
• Measure and improve kernel code coverage, identify coverage gaps, and add tests
• Execute and analyze stress tests for CPU scheduling, memory management, I/O, networking, and filesystem workloads
• Build and maintain fuzzing harnesses to find kernel vulnerabilities and reliability issues (e.g., syzkaller, Trinity, or custom)
• Collaborate with a globally distributed kernel engineering team; help validate fixes and catch regressions early
• Contribute to upstream test suites and testing frameworks
• Document test methodologies, results, and coverage gaps

Requirements

• Strong Python programming skills
• Experience with system-level test frameworks such as:
  • LTP, kselftest, xfstests, stress-ng, fio, or similar
• Experience designing and executing system-level tests (functional, stress, performance, regression)
• Familiarity with CI/CD (e.g., Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or similar)
• Ability to maintain test suites over long periods while adapting to multiple supported versions
• Familiarity with Linux/Ubuntu (preferred) or Debian, plus Linux kernel internals/subsystems
• Linux systems administration and automation experience
• Solid background with Git
• Well-organized, self-starting, able to deliver to schedules
• Strong written and spoken English communication
• Ability to travel twice a year (up to two weeks per trip)

Nice to Have

• Kernel fuzzing tools/techniques (e.g., syzkaller, Trinity, AFL, custom harnesses)
• Code coverage instrumentation (e.g., gcov, kcov, LLVM source-based coverage)
• Kernel tracing/observability tools (e.g., ftrace, perf, bpftrace, eBPF)
• Static analysis tools (e.g., sparse, smatch, Coccinelle)
• Fault injection frameworks (e.g., failslab)