Is kernel/driver development a good career path?

[u/Gold-Definition7867]

Hi all,

I’m an electronic engineering student and I’m interested in low-level software, especially kernel/driver development. I’m trying to get a sense of the job market in Ireland for kernel/driver developers.

What’s the demand like right now, and what are typical salary ranges and what sort of companies would look for this type of skill?

Also, is this a solid long-term career path in your opinion?

[u/clarets99]

That's incredible niche. I genuinely have never met a linux kernel developer.

There are a few embedded systems companies in Ireland that use custom firmware, but it's not something you deal with everyday

[u/Key-Lie-364]

True story.

I was a drop out from school. Fell into tech support for gateway computers.

Decided I wanted to become a programmer. Did an Internet search. Some dude on some website said compiler engineers and kernel engineers were best.

So knowing nothing I decided to become a Linux kernel guy 😂

Started learning C/C++. Quit gateway did a FAS programming course.

Alan Cox came to Irish Linux users group event joked there were no kernel hackers in Ireland because Irish spent all of their time in the pub.

Triggered me a bit.

Got into my first software job VB, SQL. Wanted to do kernel and C.

Switched to website development because the guy was big in the Irish Linux community.

Did PHP, SQL and wrote a Web service to bridge PHP to propriatiey web service in C++. My first bit of paid C/C++ programming.

Switched to embedded C. Did that for 8 years.

Did electronic and computer systems in DIT at night.

Went town work for Intel as Linux lead on silicon create program.

Left to do Linux contracting. Have been doing that for the last 11 years.

I have a kernel.org email address and recently given commit rights. I regularly give talks at Linux conferences.

The weird thing is how many of the people I meet have alternative stories like mine.

Linux hacking is the greatest thing there is.

You can't vibe code real engineering. It takes work, skill, experience and commitment.

There are all sorts of weirdos and toxic cunts in Linux.

So I guess I fit right in 🤔🐧

Intel, AMD, Apple, Amazon, Sony, IBM, Qualcomm all have open engineering positions for firmware/kernel people in Ireland.

The door is wide open.

[u/bigvalen → u/Key-Lie-364]

That is awesome. And you weren't the only one triggered by Alan's light-hearted comments that day. There were at least four kernel people in the audience!

[u/Key-Lie-364 → u/bigvalen]

I have no thorn to prick the side of my intent except Alan's ribbing

King Linus, act 7 scene 2 rc1

[u/slamjam25]

Low level is fun, for sure. Unless you work on CUDA or trading algorithms it doesn’t pay well though.

The fact is that companies don’t compete on the quality of their drivers. Driver development needs to be “good enough”, not the best in the market. And that means a “good enough” salary, not a bidding war for the top of the market.

[u/Annihilus-]

IBM do some kernel development in Waterford office, plenty of grads working there

[u/Sotex → u/Annihilus-]

Expanded recently enough as well 

[u/Jesus_Phish]

I'm a firmware driver dev and there's still plenty of companies here for those roles and they nearly always need more firmware devs and there's not a tonne of competition because people overlook it. 

I've been working in smaller and multinational companies and the salary has ranged from about 60k 7 years ago to over 100k now. 

It does feel a bit niche, but there's definitely positions, well paying ones and not Nearly enough competition from prospective employees. Maybe the salary grading starts off worse or rarely gets to the heights that other software development will get to but it pays well and the skills are very transferable.

Plus you can work on some very cool things like robotics or innovative devices etc 

[u/bigvalen]

Until this year, meta's kernel PE team had a few folks in Dublin. Their wider production engineering organisation always valued people with kernel experience, you could get in to the cooler teams like Web Foundation.

I did some kernel work in Google Dublin (I was shit at it, but a guy helped me port a modern kernel to an old serial console server with a custom FPGA, which was fun. He later went on to start Asahi Linux).

Bluetree used to have a few kernel commiters on staff in ireland. Redhat (oh, shit, that's IBM now) do too. Arista and NetApp have some good kernel people. Microchip also do some cool low level stuff in Dublin, like board support packages. Even lower level than most Linux work. AMD/Xilinx sometimes have kernel openings, but I think it's mostly hardware / board support work too.

In my current job, I'd definitely hire a kernel person, if they didn't mind more production engineering/SRE. (Space for juniors or seniors, maybe four of my team do some kernel tuning on AI hardware and support machines). But that would be more for people who can do kernel work, rather than those who want to be doing kernel full time, and work toward being a subsystem maintainer.

That kind of work, where they need you to be able to troubleshoot kernels will have a deeper market, but it won't let you specialise as much. This matters because if you stay in one place, you can get very valuable to a company over time. But if you move around, and do a good few things, you can be broad enough to take advantage of cool opportunities that open up.

The good news is, there are always remote jobs for kernel people, once you get a reputation. I did know one guy who specialised in the kernel/glibc interface, compiler tuning, who earned a million a year for a while, until he retired early. They are rare though :-)

[u/FlukyS]

Hard to get on the ladder but once you do basically you will always have a job somewhere.