Oracle—Lead Principal Systems Software Engineer

Job description

Description: We are responsible for the Virtual Machine Instance platforms within OCI Compute. We deliver solutions for general-purpose, confidential, and specialized computing workloads across both x86 and ARM architectures. Our team owns the full lifecycle — from launching new VM offerings to maintaining and optimizing production systems — enabling OCI to meet the evolving needs of enterprise and cloud-native customers. We are continually pushing the boundaries of virtualization technology to fulfill our mission of providing customers with highly performant, always-available, and elastic virtual machines. Responsibilities: Role Summary: As a Lead Principal Member of Technical Staff, you will lead software development efforts for key features within Oracle Compute's service offerings. This role combines deep hands-on engineering expertise with technical leadership, focusing on the design, development, and operation of large-scale, highly available cloud services. The ideal candidate will mentor team members, drive high-priority initiatives, and contribute to the definition of engineering standards and best practices across the organization. Key Responsibilities: - Own the software design and development for major components of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure's Virtual Machine platform, building new solutions across the virtualization software stack. - Drive operational excellence by defining and applying best practices to improve the quality, reliability, and performance of the hypervisor and virtual machine platform. - Perform deep dives across the stack — from low-level Linux systems to high-level distributed system interactions — to identify root causes and ensure system resilience and fault tolerance. Basic Qualifications: - 10+ years of software development experience in system-level engineering. - 5+ years of experience with OS kernel internals (e.g., memory management, device drivers, or kernel subsystems). - 5+ years of experience with virtualization technologies (e.g., QEMU/KVM, Hyper-V, ESX). - Proficiency in at least two of the following programming languages: C, C++, Rust, Java, or C#. - Strong knowledge of data structures, algorithms, and operating systems. - Excellent verbal and written communication skills. - Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Computer Engineering, or a related field. Preferred Qualifications: - Experience with public cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, OCI, GCP). - Experience with Quality Assurance for cloud infrastructure. - Experience with GPU VMs. - Experience with SmartNICs, SR-IOV/VFIO, and live migration technologies. - Experience with TPM and confidential computing. - Experience with system performance analysis and tuning. - Master’s degree in computer science, Computer Engineering, or a related field.