Lead Principal Systems Software Engineer

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.

• *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.