Kernel / Hypervisor Engineer, Firecracker
Job ID: ******** | Amazon Development Centre Ireland Limited
Join us at AWS Lambda in Dublin, Ireland, building Firecracker – the open-source virtual machine monitor (VMM) purpose-built for serverless and container workloads.
Firecracker runs at global scale as the foundation of AWS Lambda, Aurora D-SQL, and other AWS services, and is integrated by 10+ external teams as part of their platforms.
We are looking for a Kernel / Hypervisor Engineer who is passionate about low-level systems programming and wants to push the boundaries of virtualization technology.
In this role, you will work at the intersection of hardware and software – designing and implementing hypervisor components, device emulation, memory management, and guest-host interfaces in Rust on Linux/KVM.
Your work will directly impact the security, performance, and efficiency of compute infrastructure serving millions of customers.
Key Job Responsibilities
Design, develop, and maintain hypervisor and VMM components in Rust, including virtual device emulation, memory management, and vCPU scheduling.
Optimize boot latency, memory footprint, and I/O throughput for transient microVM workloads at global scale.
Harden the security boundary between guest and host, contributing to threat modeling and implementing isolation mechanisms.
Contribute to the upstream Linux kernel where needed to support Firecracker's roadmap.
Mentor and coach junior engineers, drive code quality through reviews, and champion best practices.
Participate in on-call rotation to ensure operational excellence of Firecracker-based services.
A day in the life: Your day might start by reviewing pull requests on the Firecracker open-source repository, providing feedback to community contributors or teammates.
You then dive into implementing a new virtio device or optimizing a hot path in the VMM, writing Rust and reasoning about memory safety and performance trade-offs.
After lunch, you collaborate with an internal AWS service team that consumes Firecracker to debug a subtle guest-host interaction – perhaps a vCPU scheduling anomaly or an unexpected memory mapping behavior.
You wrap up by writing a design doc for an upcoming kernel interface change, getting input from colleagues across the team.
Throughout the day, you balance deep technical work with collaboration, working in the open on GitHub alongside a global community.
About the team: We are the Compute Capsule team within AWS Lambda, based in Dublin, Ireland.
We own Firecracker end-to-end – from its open-source development on GitHub to its deployment at scale inside AWS.
We focus on serverless and container virtualization, trusted compute, and server fleet tooling.
We value work-life balance, respect each other's time, and invest in growing every team member through mentorship, challenging assignments, and training.
We believe diverse perspectives make us stronger and actively seek team players who thrive in collaborative, inclusive environments.
Basic Qualifications
Experience (non-internship) in professional software development.
Hands-on experience with low-level systems programming (e.g., kernel, hypervisor, firmware, or embedded systems).
Proficiency in at least one systems language: C, C++, or Rust.
Solid understanding of Linux internals (syscalls, memory management, process).
Experience with virtualization technologies (KVM, Xen, QEMU, or similar).
Preferred Qualifications
Experience with Rust in production systems.
Contributions to open-source projects (kernel, hypervisor, or systems tooling).
Experience with device emulation or virtio.
Familiarity with hardware-assisted virtualization (Intel VT-x, AMD-V, or Arm virtualization extensions).
Knowledge of performance profiling and optimization at the systems level (perf, ftrace, eBPF).
Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
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