Full-Time Senior Staff Linux Kernel Engineer

The Systems Engineering team at ServiceNow is looking for a Sr. Staff-level technical leader to own and evolve our Linux Red Hat platform. This role sits within the Linux Center of Expertise and is responsible for Red Hat OS release strategy, Linux kernel operational support, OS automation, and enterprise Linux package distribution across our global cloud footprint. You’ll define the technical direction for RHEL and kernel usage at ServiceNow, partnering closely with Red Hat, Hardware Engineering, and internal Operational Program Management teams to ensure our platform is secure, performant, and easy to consume at scale.

What you get to do in this role:

• Lead the Red Hat OS & Kernel strategy
• Define and maintain the reference RHEL OS baseline (RHEL 8/9 and beyond), including kernel versions, tuning profiles, and hardening standards.
• Partner with Red Hat and hardware vendors to validate kernels, drivers, and firmware for new platforms and features (NVMe, GPUs, NUMA, cgroups/containers, etc.).
• Own kernel operational support at scale
• Diagnose and resolve complex kernel-level issues (crashes, hangs, performance regressions) using tools such as crash, kdump, perf, eBPF, systemtap, and systemd/journal analysis.
• Drive root cause analysis and long-term remediation for OS and kernel incidents, and translate findings into improved standards, automation, and observability.
• Drive OS automation and configuration at enterprise scale
• Design and implement scalable automation using Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) and Red Hat Satellite to manage lifecycle operations (provisioning, patching, subscription/content management, and drift remediation).
• Collaborate with Puppet and configuration management team members to ensure a cohesive “everything as code” model for OS configuration across bare metal, VMs, and cloud platforms.
• Modernize Linux package distribution, observability and supply chain
• Define and maintain the strategy for internal RPM repositories, content views, and promotion workflows across environments (dev → staging → production).
• Work with security, OS Engineering team members and platform teams to improve software supply-chain integrity for OS packages (signing, SBOMs, auditability).
• Define and implement observability standards (metrics, logs, events) for OS and kernel health, ensuring issues can be detected and remediated proactively.
• Provide technical leadership across the organization
• Act as the primary subject-matter expert and escalation point for RHEL and kernel topics across Systems Engineering and partner teams.
• Support On-call schedule and act as escalation point of contact for Red Hat Linux P0 incidents.
• Mentor other engineers, drive design reviews, and set high engineering standards for reliability, security, and simplicity in our OS stack.
• Influence roadmaps across multiple teams to align with OS and kernel best practices, including container platforms, storage, networking, and security.

To be successful in this role you have:

• Experience in leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into work processes, decision-making, or problem-solving.
• Has deep, hands-on expertise with Linux and the Red Hat ecosystem
• 12+ years operating Linux in production at scale, with significant experience on RHEL (7/8/9) in mission-critical environments with a Bachelor’s degree; or 8 years and a Master’s degree or a PhD with 5 years experience or equivalent experience.
• Strong understanding of Linux kernel internals and how to tune them for performance and reliability.
• Is highly skilled with automation and lifecycle tooling
• Expert-level experience with Ansible / Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) for OS configuration, orchestration, and remediation.
• Hands-on experience with Red Hat Satellite (or equivalent) for OS lifecycle, content management, patching, and provisioning at large scale.
• Familiarity with Puppet (Open Source or Enterprise) and/or other configuration management tools is a strong plus.
• Understands large-scale production environments
• Experience running Linux across thousands of nodes in hybrid environments (bare metal, virtualized, and hyperscaler cloud).
• Strong knowledge of networking, storage, and Linux software packaging (RPM, YUM/DNF, repositories, content promotion workflows).
• Builds and ships everything as code
• Comfortable designing and reviewing infrastructure-as-code solutions, including CI/CD pipelines for OS artifacts and automation content (e.g., GitLab or similar).
• Experience writing high-quality code and tooling in languages such as Python, Ruby, Go, or similar, with solid testing and documentation practices.
• Leads through influence and collaboration
• Demonstrated ability to drive cross-functional initiatives involving platform, security, SRE, and application teams.
• Strong communication skills, able to document and present systems architecture and decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Proven track record of mentoring and elevating other engineers, and of setting and enforcing technical standards.
• Can figure things out
• Comfortable digging deep into unfamiliar systems, tools, and kernel internals to identify root causes and design robust solutions.
• Curious, data-driven, and pragmatic—capable of balancing ideal architecture with real-world constraints and timelines.

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