Linux Engineer

We’re looking for Linux Engineers to join the team that maintains the critical infrastructure underlying the rest of Jane Street’s technology. It’s a broad role, and no two Linux Engineers look exactly alike. Our work spans on-prem and cloud infrastructure, every major pillar (compute, storage, networking), and every layer of the stack from the physical hardware to workload orchestration. You should expect to work in some (but not necessarily all) of these areas, and to go genuinely deep in a few.

That might mean:

• Building the in-house tools and systems that make up our platform, or integrating mainstream (often open-source) technologies so they feel native to our infrastructure
• Acting as one of the firm’s Linux experts, and teaching other engineers specialist skills like systems debugging
• Automating our own work, because it makes us faster and more reliable (and we think it’s fun)
• Diagnosing and resolving production issues in real time, often under time pressure
• Carrying out scheduled changes to the platform, like upgrades, migrations, capacity changes, and rollouts, planned meticulously and executed carefully

The problem space runs from the physical to the abstract: datacenter provisioning and orchestration, kernels and drivers delivered through Nix and RPMs, production and research storage at scale, cloud that integrates cleanly with our on-prem platform, and, in partnership with our IT and Network Engineering colleagues, Linux desktops and how our hosts participate in the network.

We see Linux Engineering and Software Engineering as two ends of a spectrum, and plenty of people could do either job well. Linux Engineering is likely the better fit if you treat Linux itself as your problem space: you like working close to the operating system, you want to look after production infrastructure, and you’re happy spending more of your time in a consulting capacity than a typical developer would. (Compared with kernel development, the emphasis flips: you’d rarely develop the kernel itself, though targeted patches happen, and you’d spend far more time running production infrastructure.) We’re hiring for both roles and are happy to advise you on which might fit best.

We don’t expect you to come in with deep experience; we’re happy to hire smart problem-solvers and teach them what they need to know. But the job leans much more toward engineering than a traditional operations role: relentless automation instead of manual toil, and a large body of in-house technology rather than only off-the-shelf tools. You’ll build systems, not just operate them.

We don’t expect you to have a background in finance or any other specific field - we’re looking for smart people who enjoy solving interesting problems. We’re more interested in how you think and learn than what you currently know. You should be:

• Knowledgeable about operating system fundamentals, computer architecture, and systems programming concepts like sockets, virtual memory, and the process life cycle
• Able to understand network protocols at a basic level
• Comfortable at the command line of a Linux machine (whether from coursework, side projects, or time spent administering a campus computer lab) and fluent in basic introspection and troubleshooting: system health, individual processes, logs
• Someone who solves problems by writing code (in any language) and cares about robust software engineering
• Intellectually curious, collaborative, humble, and eager to learn (including from mistakes)
• A strong communicator
• Fluent in English, If you’re a recruiting agency and want to partner with us, please reach out to agency-partnerships@janestreet.com