Senior Platform Software Engineer

Job Overview

Oracle is seeking a Principal Platform Software Engineer (IC4) to design and build reliable systems at the intersection of Linux, virtualization, container runtimes, and public-cloud infrastructure. This hands-on engineering role requires expertise in production Java development, Linux internals, container isolation, hypervisor and guest behavior, image and package pipelines, performance diagnosis, secure rollout, and operational ownership.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, deploy, and operate software for provisioning, upgrading, and managing containers across Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) regions.
• Own and shape technical direction for components including Linux hypervisor and guest images, lifecycle-management systems, container runtimes, QEMU/KVM-based virtualization, systemd, networking, storage, security, and automated image delivery.
• Develop and maintain production-grade Linux hypervisor and guest operating-system images, including formats like qcow2, using technologies such as RPM, DNF/YUM, and OSTree.
• Customize Linux at the kernel, systemd, networking, storage, security, package management, and boot layers to meet platform requirements.
• Integrate and troubleshoot container runtimes (e.g., containerd/runc) and OCI container behavior.
• Optimize virtualization using QEMU/KVM and paravirtualized networking, storage, and host/guest communication devices (e.g., virtio-net, virtio-scsi).
• Improve performance, boot time, reliability, resource utilization, isolation, and scalability across virtualized Linux environments.
• Troubleshoot complex issues across the Linux kernel, virtualization stack, container runtimes, networking, storage, security, and distributed cloud infrastructure.
• Design and execute functional, integration, performance, regression, failure, and security testing.
• Build CI/CD and image-release pipelines for automated package integration, vulnerability remediation, security validation, qualification, canary deployment, compatibility checks, monitoring, rollback, and release evidence.
• Integrate the data plane with OCI services for networking, storage, identity, telemetry, and infrastructure lifecycle management.
• Automate infrastructure provisioning and validation using Terraform and other Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices.
• Coordinate safe releases across large hypervisor fleets and multiple global regions, including staged deployment and operational readiness.
• Participate in on-call and incident response, drive root-cause analysis, and improve monitoring, runbooks, and service reliability.
• Produce clear design documents, operational procedures, troubleshooting guides, and architectural decisions; mentor engineers and provide technical leadership.

Required Qualifications

• BS/MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Approximately 6+ years of relevant production software or systems-engineering experience, or demonstrably equivalent IC4-level scope.
• Strong production programming experience with Java 17 or later.
• Strong hands-on Linux systems engineering and kernel-level debugging, including processes, services, namespaces, cgroups, systemd, networking, storage, and operating-system behavior.
• Deep container engineering experience beyond application-level use, including building and troubleshooting container images and working with runtimes like Docker/OCI, containerd, runc, or CRI-O.
• Strong bash/shell scripting and low-level troubleshooting skills.
• Strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, operating systems, networking, distributed systems, testing, and software design.
• Production experience with at least one public cloud.
• Experience building or operating highly available production services, including monitoring, incident response, on-call participation, and operational improvement.
• Experience with automated testing, CI/CD, release automation, and Infrastructure as Code; Terraform experience is expected.
• Ability to diagnose complex failures across multiple layers and communicate evidence, tradeoffs, and proposed solutions clearly.
• Strong ownership, collaboration, documentation, and engineering judgment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Java 25, modern Java concurrency, JVM internals, profiling, garbage collection, tuning, or performance optimization.
• Hands-on QEMU/KVM experience, including VM lifecycle, performance profiling, troubleshooting, and virtio devices.
• Proficiency in Go or Rust systems programming; C experience is useful for low-level platform work.
• Direct kernel patch, module, driver, eBPF, scheduler, or other kernel-development experience.
• Linux image creation and customization using qcow2, RPM, DNF/YUM, package repositories, boot configuration, or OSTree.
• Advanced cgroup v1/v2, CPU quota/weight, cpuset, NUMA, scheduler, performance, and resource-contention analysis.
• Linux networking experience with bridges, veth pairs, network namespaces, routing, TCP/IP, packet capture, and traffic diagnosis.
• Storage and security experience with LUKS/dm-crypt, LVM, iSCSI, virtual disks, encryption, vulnerability remediation, or secure bootstrapping.
• Experience with debugging and profiling tools such as strace, tcpdump, Wireshark, gdb, perf, core-dump analysis, or equivalent tools.
• ARM/aarch64 and x86 multi-architecture package, image, test, or deployment pipelines.
• OCI experience, particularly with networking, storage, identity, telemetry, regional deployment, and infrastructure lifecycle APIs.