Senior Software Engineer

Sidero Labs builds the infrastructure layer for modern compute:
Talos Linux, a minimal, immutable, security-hardened Linux OS (11,000+ Git Hub stars, OpenSSF-badged) built to run Kubernetes; and Omni, our SaaS (also available self-hosted) for managing fleets of Talos machines ’re a small, remote-first team with an outsized open-source footprint.

Full-time
· Remote — Santa Barbara, CA or Europe preferred (time zones compatible with either)

Individual contributor track — no direct reports. Evaluated on your ability to independently own the architecture of a system or component, not on managing people. Reports to our VP of Engineering, joining a team of ~10 engineers.

• Design, build, and evolve a specific subsystem within Talos Linux or Omni end-to-end — from technical proposal through production operation.
• Write and drive adoption of architecture/design docs on your own technical authority, not through org-chart authority.
• Do root-cause work on hard, cross-stack problems spanning the Linux kernel, containerd, etcd, the Kubernetes control plane, or virtualization internals (KVM/libvirt).
• Raise the bar through code review, RFC feedback, and pairing — mentorship without formal performance management.

• 6+ years professional software engineering experience with deep, hands-on Go expertise.
• A track record of independently architecting a non-trivial system or component in production — not just contributing to one someone else designed.
• Deep Linux systems knowledge: kernel internals, syscalls, cgroups/name spaces, or comparable low-level systems work.
• Production experience with Kubernetes and the cloud-native control-plane stack (containerd, etcd) — OR deep experience with virtualization internals (KVM, libvirt) is equally valued.
• Writing Kubernetes controllers/operators, gRPC-based services, or virtualization tooling — strong plus.
• Prior open-source maintainer or significant-contributor experience — strong plus.
• Comfortable being the final technical call on your area without needing managerial authority to make it stick.

• Intro interview — short, no technical questions, just to get to know each other, plus a quick cultural fit check (1 person).
• Offline code review — either you share open-source code you’re proud of, or you complete a small test exercise; either way, the team reviews your source code, and the result is either “good, let’s move on” or “bad, let’s stop here” (offline).
• Technical session — we start by asking questions about your code submission, then move into several areas of discussion without any live coding (3–4 people).

Base salary $130,000–$250,000 USD, based on location and depth of relevant systems experience.