Role: Senior C++ ChromeOS Platform & Kernel Engineer
Type: Contract
Location: Mexico - Remote
Core Responsibilities
1. ChromeOS Platform & C++ Systems Engineering
- Large-Scale C++ Development: Author, modify, and maintain production C++ code within massive, multi-million-line codebases, including the Chromium/ChromeOS monolithic source tree.
- Userland Daemons & IPC: Design and debug userland system daemons using asynchronous I/O, event loops (libchrome), and inter-process communication protocols such as DBus and Mojo.
- OS Build & Tooling Maintenance: Manage and configure Portage/Gentoo-based build systems, create custom board overlays, handle cross-compilation environments, and maintain board image deployment and flashing workflows, including custom image builds, Hotrod, and cros_sdk.
2. Linux Kernel & Hardware-Adjacent Debugging
- Kernel Triage & Patching: Triage, debug, and patch Linux kernel issues across LTS kernel branches, specifically 5.10, 5.15, and newer. Interpret automated crash reports from syzbot/syzkaller, formulate fixes, and submit upstream or downstream patches.
- Peripheral Bus & Protocol Analysis: Perform hardware-adjacent debugging using USB protocol analyzers, logic analyzers, and bus debugging tools such as I2C, SPI, PCIe, USB UVC/UAC to resolve peripheral interoperability, audio/video capture, and hotplugging issues on CfM platforms.
3. Engineering & Release Triage
- P0/P1 Regression Escalations: Lead rapid triage for high-severity P0/P1 production regressions and system crashes across release milestone channels, including Canary, Dev, Beta, and Stable.
- Crash Dump Analysis: Analyze kernel panics, userspace stack traces, minidumps, and system logs to identify root causes and quickly author, verify, and land bug fixes.
- Release Backporting: Safely backport critical stability and security fixes across multiple ChromeOS milestone branches without introducing regressions.
Technical Requirements & Qualifications
- C++ Systems Programming: Extensive experience with modern C++ (C++14/17/20) within large codebases. Deep understanding of asynchronous programming, multithreading primitives, memory models, and IPC design using DBus and Mojo.
- Linux Kernel Engineering: Direct experience triaging and fixing bugs in the Linux kernel, particularly 5.10/5.15 LTS. Ability to interpret syzkaller/syzbot reproducer scripts and stack traces to fix race conditions, memory corruption, and driver panics.
- ChromeOS/Gentoo Infrastructure: Demonstrated proficiency with Gentoo Portage, ebuild files, board overlays, cross-compilers, and building/flashing custom ChromeOS board images.
- Hardware Triage Tooling: Hands-on experience using physical bus tools such as USB analyzers, oscilloscopes, and logic analyzers, along with system utilities including ftrace, perf, gdb, strace, and dmesg.
- Critical Issue Response: Proven experience handling production emergencies, including P0/P1 regressions, conducting root-cause analysis on stack traces/dumps, and cherry-picking/backporting patches across active release branches.
- Chrome for Meetings (CfM) Experience: Familiarity with conference room media pipeline architecture, including V4L2, ALSA, PipeWire, USB video/audio classes (UVC/UAC), and HDMI display pipelines.
- Upstream Contributions: Track record of landing commits in upstream kernel.org or Chromium/ChromiumOS repositories.
- Automated Testing: Experience writing unit tests, end-to-end integration tests using the Tast framework, Go, or Python, and regression suites for platform daemons.