Linux Engineer Jobs in California
Linux Engineer jobs in California are among the most actively recruited technical roles in the country, concentrated in cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, enterprise systems, and semiconductor manufacturing across every seniority level from junior administrator to principal engineer. The heaviest hiring is in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego, where companies like Google, Cisco, and Qualcomm maintain large engineering operations that rely on Linux-based infrastructure. The most in-demand specialties are kernel development, DevOps automation, and site reliability engineering. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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Anduril Industries is a defense technology company with a mission to transform U.S. and allied military capabilities with advanced technology. By bringing the expertise, technology, and business model of the 21st century's most innovative companies to the defense industry, Anduril is changing how military systems are designed, built and sold. Anduril's family of systems is powered by Lattice OS, an AI-powered operating system that turns thousands of data streams into a realtime, 3D command and control center. As the world enters an era of strategic competition, Anduril is committed to bringing cutting-edge autonomy, AI, computer vision, sensor fusion, and networking technology to the military in months, not years.
About the Team
Anduril develops advanced robotic systems that operate at the edge across land, sea, and air. Our team builds the critical systems powering everything from Group 1–3 autonomous aerial systems (such as Ghost, Anvil, Bolt, and Altius) to autonomous Sentry Towers that safeguard borders and critical infrastructure with real-time sensor fusion.
Underpinning these diverse robotic fleets is our DeviceOS team, which engineers the unified, highly reliable operating system and hardware-enablement platform that powers all of Anduril's autonomous assets. We take systems from initial schematics and paper sketches to hardened, field-ready robotics deployed in the most challenging operational environments on Earth.
About the Job
Underneath our airframes and Sentry Towers are custom carrier boards, embedded ARM architectures, and NVIDIA Jetson modules integrated with an intense array of hardware: electro-optical/infrared cameras, radars, CAN-connected sensor nodes, GPS, flight controllers, radios, and high-power motor drivers.
Between the silicon vendor's raw Board Support Package (BSP) and our autonomous mission software sits a layer that must be owned deliberately: the boot chain, device trees, kernel drivers, and the guarantee that every piece of hardware deterministically enumerates and operates when our image boots.
In this role, you will own the boundary where custom hardware meets software. You will customize vendor BSPs and evaluate upstream changes. You will debug boot end-to-end—from firmware (EDK2/U-Boot) through unified kernel images to an encrypted root filesystem running at the tactical edge. You are the engineer who can read a schematic to diagnose a bus fault, remediate a kernel CVE on deployed hardware, and write the platform drivers that keep our robots flying and monitoring.
In this role, you will maintain and support a large deployed fleet by writing fixes for existing hardware and boot chains. This work is critical to our operations: a firmware regression is not just a failing test, it is a physical unit someone has to service in the field.
What You'll Do
- Own the Boot Path: Own the boot sequence end-to-end on deployed compute: low-level firmware, U-Boot/UEFI, unified kernel images, initrd, encrypted storage unlock, and handoff to a running NixOS environment. Debug boot failures on hardware via remote support.
- Customize & Sustain Vendor BSPs: Reconcile vendor BSPs (Tegra/Jetson Linux, NXP, etc.) with modern NixOS package sets. Produce kernel and device tree patches when hardware requires custom behavior, and forward-port these changes across OS baseline upgrades.
- Guarantee Deterministic Hardware Availability: Ensure all peripherals—cameras, radars, motor controllers, CAN networks, and radios—are reliably enumerated, correctly named, and fully operational across boots and platform upgrades.
- Sustain a Long-Lived Baseline: Keep the existing signed boot chain and disk encryption working as the firmware, kernels, and package sets change underneath them. Triage and remediate CVEs in vendor kernels and low-level system components on our systems already deployed in the field.
- Automate & Validate: Build and maintain automated Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) test suites to catch regressions in power states, bus communication, and platform stability before code hits flight or field hardware.
- Perform Deep Hardware/Software Root-Cause Analysis: Diagnose intermittent bus errors, thermal and power throttling issues, kernel panics, and boot hangs using serial consoles, logic analyzers, dmesg, and hardware schematics.
- Be the Upstream: Triage upstream kernel and vendor BSP issues, produce the patch when no upstream fix is coming, and carry that patch set forward as the platform moves.
Required Qualifications
- 4+ years of professional embedded Linux platform, sustainment of deployed embedded Linux platforms, or kernel-adjacent integration experience.
- Deep understanding of the embedded Linux boot chain: firmware/bootloaders (U-Boot, EDK2), device trees, kernel command line, initrd/initramfs, and root filesystem assembly.
- Strong programming skills in C (for kernel/driver development and BSP patching) along with proficiency in Rust or C++ for userspace platform integration and services.
- Hands-on experience debugging hardware at the bench: using serial consoles, reading schematics and component datasheets, and tracing issues to the board level.
- Experience maintaining software deployed on real-world hardware, where updates must be safe, resilient to bricking, and strictly validated against regressions.
- U.S. Person status is required due to export control regulations (ITAR/EAR), with eligibility to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance.
Preferred Qualifications
- Nix / NixOS Experience: Direct experience with declarative systems (Nix/NixOS) for embedded builds; or deep expertise in Yocto/Buildroot paired with an appetite to transition to modern, reproducible paradigms.
- NVIDIA Jetson / Tegra Depth: Hands-on experience with JetPack, Jetson Linux BSP, Tegra boot architecture, or CUDA compute runtime integration.
- Low-Level Platform Security: Practical implementation of hardware root-of-trust, secure boot, HAB/AHAB, or measured boot (TPM).
- Automated HIL Testing: Experience architecting automated test benches using Python or Bash to validate embedded Linux builds against physical test targets.
- Familiarity with functional programming paradigms (e.g., Nix, Haskell).
- Upstream open-source contributions to the Linux kernel, U-Boot, or system-level open-source projects.
The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. Highly competitive equity grants are included in the majority of full time offers; and are considered part of Anduril's total compensation package. Additionally, Anduril offers top-tier benefits for full-time employees, including:
Benefits
At Anduril, we invest in our people. Our comprehensive, competitive benefits package (available at little to no cost to employees) ensures you're supported in health, recovery, and whatever comes next. For more information, Explore Our Benefits.
Protecting Yourself from Recruitment Scams
Anduril is committed to maintaining the integrity of our Talent acquisition process and the security of our candidates. We've observed a rise in sophisticated phishing and fraudulent schemes where individuals impersonate Anduril representatives, luring job seekers with false interviews or job offers. These scammers often attempt to extract payment or sensitive personal information.
To ensure your safety and help you navigate your job search with confidence, please keep the following critical points in mind:
No Financial Requests: Anduril will never solicit payment or demand personal financial details (such as banking information, credit card numbers, or social security numbers) at any stage of our hiring process. Our legitimate recruitment is entirely free for candidates.
- Please always verify communications:
- Direct from Anduril: If you receive an email from one of our recruiters, it will only come from an @anduril.com address.
- Via Agency Partner: If contacted by a recruiting agency for an Anduril role, their email will clearly identify their agency. If you suspect any suspicious activity, please verify the agency's authenticity by reaching out to contact@anduril.com.
Exercise Caution with Unsolicited Outreach: If you receive any communication that appears suspicious, contains grammatical errors, or makes unusual requests, do not engage. Always confirm the sender's email domain is @anduril.com before providing any personal information or clicking on links.
What to Do If You Suspect Fraud: Should you encounter any questionable or fraudulent outreach claiming to be from Anduril, please report it immediately to contact@anduril.com. Your proactive caution is invaluable in protecting your personal information and upholding the security and trustworthiness of our recruitment efforts.
Data Privacy
To view Anduril's candidate data privacy policy, please visit https://anduril.com/applicant-privacy-notice/.
By submitting your application, you consent to Anduril Industries using a third-party service provider to conduct pre-employment risk, integrity, and due diligence screening and assessing potential risks as part of your application process. This third-party service provider provides risk-intelligence services that may include analysis of sanctions and watchlists, adverse media, public-record information, and other lawful open-source or commercial data sources. This third-party service provider does not act as a consumer reporting agency. Use of this provider helps to ensure compliance with applicable laws and protect technology, intellectual property, and organizational security.
Anduril Industries is a defense technology company with a mission to transform U.S. and allied military capabilities with advanced technology. By bringing the expertise, technology, and business model of the 21st century's most innovative companies to the defense industry, Anduril is changing how military systems are designed, built and sold. Anduril's family of systems is powered by Lattice OS, an AI-powered operating system that turns thousands of data streams into a realtime, 3D command and control center. As the world enters an era of strategic competition, Anduril is committed to bringing cutting-edge autonomy, AI, computer vision, sensor fusion, and networking technology to the military in months, not years.
About the Team
Anduril develops advanced robotic systems that operate at the edge across land, sea, and air. Our team builds the critical systems powering everything from Group 1–3 autonomous aerial systems (such as Ghost, Anvil, Bolt, and Altius) to autonomous Sentry Towers that safeguard borders and critical infrastructure with real-time sensor fusion.
Underpinning these diverse robotic fleets is our DeviceOS team, which engineers the unified, highly reliable operating system and hardware-enablement platform that powers all of Anduril's autonomous assets. We take systems from initial schematics and paper sketches to hardened, field-ready robotics deployed in the most challenging operational environments on Earth.
About the Job
Underneath our airframes and Sentry Towers are custom carrier boards, embedded ARM architectures, and NVIDIA Jetson modules integrated with an intense array of hardware: electro-optical/infrared cameras, radars, CAN-connected sensor nodes, GPS, flight controllers, radios, and high-power motor drivers.
Between the silicon vendor's raw Board Support Package (BSP) and our autonomous mission software sits a layer that must be owned deliberately: the boot chain, device trees, kernel drivers, and the guarantee that every piece of hardware deterministically enumerates and operates when our image boots.
In this role, you will own the boundary where custom hardware meets software. You will customize vendor BSPs and evaluate upstream changes. You will debug boot end-to-end—from firmware (EDK2/U-Boot) through unified kernel images to an encrypted root filesystem running at the tactical edge. You are the engineer who can read a schematic to diagnose a bus fault, remediate a kernel CVE on deployed hardware, and write the platform drivers that keep our robots flying and monitoring.
In this role, you will maintain and support a large deployed fleet by writing fixes for existing hardware and boot chains. This work is critical to our operations: a firmware regression is not just a failing test, it is a physical unit someone has to service in the field.
What You'll Do
- Own the Boot Path: Own the boot sequence end-to-end on deployed compute: low-level firmware, U-Boot/UEFI, unified kernel images, initrd, encrypted storage unlock, and handoff to a running NixOS environment. Debug boot failures on hardware via remote support.
- Customize & Sustain Vendor BSPs: Reconcile vendor BSPs (Tegra/Jetson Linux, NXP, etc.) with modern NixOS package sets. Produce kernel and device tree patches when hardware requires custom behavior, and forward-port these changes across OS baseline upgrades.
- Guarantee Deterministic Hardware Availability: Ensure all peripherals—cameras, radars, motor controllers, CAN networks, and radios—are reliably enumerated, correctly named, and fully operational across boots and platform upgrades.
- Sustain a Long-Lived Baseline: Keep the existing signed boot chain and disk encryption working as the firmware, kernels, and package sets change underneath them. Triage and remediate CVEs in vendor kernels and low-level system components on our systems already deployed in the field.
- Automate & Validate: Build and maintain automated Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) test suites to catch regressions in power states, bus communication, and platform stability before code hits flight or field hardware.
- Perform Deep Hardware/Software Root-Cause Analysis: Diagnose intermittent bus errors, thermal and power throttling issues, kernel panics, and boot hangs using serial consoles, logic analyzers, dmesg, and hardware schematics.
- Be the Upstream: Triage upstream kernel and vendor BSP issues, produce the patch when no upstream fix is coming, and carry that patch set forward as the platform moves.
Required Qualifications
- 4+ years of professional embedded Linux platform, sustainment of deployed embedded Linux platforms, or kernel-adjacent integration experience.
- Deep understanding of the embedded Linux boot chain: firmware/bootloaders (U-Boot, EDK2), device trees, kernel command line, initrd/initramfs, and root filesystem assembly.
- Strong programming skills in C (for kernel/driver development and BSP patching) along with proficiency in Rust or C++ for userspace platform integration and services.
- Hands-on experience debugging hardware at the bench: using serial consoles, reading schematics and component datasheets, and tracing issues to the board level.
- Experience maintaining software deployed on real-world hardware, where updates must be safe, resilient to bricking, and strictly validated against regressions.
- U.S. Person status is required due to export control regulations (ITAR/EAR), with eligibility to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance.
Preferred Qualifications
- Nix / NixOS Experience: Direct experience with declarative systems (Nix/NixOS) for embedded builds; or deep expertise in Yocto/Buildroot paired with an appetite to transition to modern, reproducible paradigms.
- NVIDIA Jetson / Tegra Depth: Hands-on experience with JetPack, Jetson Linux BSP, Tegra boot architecture, or CUDA compute runtime integration.
- Low-Level Platform Security: Practical implementation of hardware root-of-trust, secure boot, HAB/AHAB, or measured boot (TPM).
- Automated HIL Testing: Experience architecting automated test benches using Python or Bash to validate embedded Linux builds against physical test targets.
- Familiarity with functional programming paradigms (e.g., Nix, Haskell).
- Upstream open-source contributions to the Linux kernel, U-Boot, or system-level open-source projects.
The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. Highly competitive equity grants are included in the majority of full time offers; and are considered part of Anduril's total compensation package. Additionally, Anduril offers top-tier benefits for full-time employees, including:
Benefits
At Anduril, we invest in our people. Our comprehensive, competitive benefits package (available at little to no cost to employees) ensures you're supported in health, recovery, and whatever comes next. For more information, Explore Our Benefits.
Protecting Yourself from Recruitment Scams
Anduril is committed to maintaining the integrity of our Talent acquisition process and the security of our candidates. We've observed a rise in sophisticated phishing and fraudulent schemes where individuals impersonate Anduril representatives, luring job seekers with false interviews or job offers. These scammers often attempt to extract payment or sensitive personal information.
To ensure your safety and help you navigate your job search with confidence, please keep the following critical points in mind:
No Financial Requests: Anduril will never solicit payment or demand personal financial details (such as banking information, credit card numbers, or social security numbers) at any stage of our hiring process. Our legitimate recruitment is entirely free for candidates.
- Please always verify communications:
- Direct from Anduril: If you receive an email from one of our recruiters, it will only come from an @anduril.com address.
- Via Agency Partner: If contacted by a recruiting agency for an Anduril role, their email will clearly identify their agency. If you suspect any suspicious activity, please verify the agency's authenticity by reaching out to contact@anduril.com.
Exercise Caution with Unsolicited Outreach: If you receive any communication that appears suspicious, contains grammatical errors, or makes unusual requests, do not engage. Always confirm the sender's email domain is @anduril.com before providing any personal information or clicking on links.
What to Do If You Suspect Fraud: Should you encounter any questionable or fraudulent outreach claiming to be from Anduril, please report it immediately to contact@anduril.com. Your proactive caution is invaluable in protecting your personal information and upholding the security and trustworthiness of our recruitment efforts.
Data Privacy
To view Anduril's candidate data privacy policy, please visit https://anduril.com/applicant-privacy-notice/.
By submitting your application, you consent to Anduril Industries using a third-party service provider to conduct pre-employment risk, integrity, and due diligence screening and assessing potential risks as part of your application process. This third-party service provider provides risk-intelligence services that may include analysis of sanctions and watchlists, adverse media, public-record information, and other lawful open-source or commercial data sources. This third-party service provider does not act as a consumer reporting agency. Use of this provider helps to ensure compliance with applicable laws and protect technology, intellectual property, and organizational security.
See All 54 Linux Engineer Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Linux Engineer JobsLinux Engineer Jobs by City in California
Where California roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Linux Engineer Job Market in California
A snapshot from current California openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software
- Manufacturing
- Insurance
- Science & Research
- Telecommunications
What California Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in linux engineer jobs across California.
- Proficiency in major Linux distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, or CentOS
- Experience designing and managing cloud infrastructure on AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure
- Strong scripting skills in Python, Bash, or Ruby for automation and system administration
- Hands-on experience with containerization tools including Docker, Kubernetes, or OpenShift
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology, or a closely related field
- Familiarity with configuration management tools such as Ansible, Puppet, or Chef
Linux Engineer Jobs in California: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a linux engineer in California?
Linux engineering has no state-issued license in California, so the path runs through education and vendor certifications. Most California employers expect at least a bachelor's degree in computer science or information systems, combined with credentials such as Red Hat Certified Engineer or CompTIA Linux+. Building hands-on lab experience through personal projects or open-source contributions strengthens an application significantly, and California's large community college system offers IT programs that prepare candidates for entry-level roles.
How much do linux engineers make in California?
Linux engineers in California earn a median of about $134,440 a year, based on May 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, ranging from around $58,340 for the lowest 10% to over $222,690 for the top 10%. Pay rises with experience, specialty, and employer.
Which companies hire linux engineers in California?
Employers hiring linux engineers in California right now include Tesla, NVIDIA, and KLA, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of September 2026. California's density of technology headquarters, defense contractors, and cloud service providers means linux engineering roles appear across industries well beyond software, including aerospace, biotech, and financial services.
Which California cities have the most linux engineer jobs?
Santa Clara, Palo Alto, and San Diego have the most linux engineer openings in California. The Bay Area leads because it hosts the global headquarters of major cloud and infrastructure companies, while Los Angeles draws volume from entertainment technology, aerospace primes, and a growing startup ecosystem, and San Diego's concentration of defense contractors and biotech firms drives consistent demand for enterprise Linux skills.
Are there remote linux engineer jobs in California?
Yes, and more than most fields. About 27% of linux engineer openings tied to California are remote or hybrid as of September 2026, reflecting how much of the work involves managing servers and cloud environments rather than on-site hardware. Roles focused on cloud operations, DevOps pipelines, and site reliability engineering tend to offer the most remote flexibility, while positions requiring hands-on data-center work remain largely on-site.
How can I get hired as a linux engineer in California with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is an IT support or systems administrator role that runs on Linux, which large California employers use as a feeder position for engineering tracks. Companies like Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and major Bay Area tech firms run internship and rotational programs for candidates without full professional experience. Earning a Red Hat Certified System Administrator credential or completing an associate-level Linux program at a California community college gives a candidate a measurable edge when applying to those entry roles.
Where can I find and apply to linux engineer jobs in California?
You can find and apply to linux engineer jobs in California on Migrate Mate, which lists current California openings. Find the roles that fit your experience and location, then apply directly to each one.
See All 54 Linux Engineer Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
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