Senior Linux Kernel CameraISP Driver Engineer

POSITION

Senior Linux Kernel Camera/ISP Driver Engineer

LOCATION

Palo Alto CA Hybrid 3 days onsite

REQUIRED SKILLS

Role Summary

As a Senior Kernel Engineer you will take ownership of a Linux camera/ISP stack centered on the chipset vendors ISP architecture. Your work will span V4L2 media pipeline implementation firmware command/response integration DMA-BUF and GPU-shared memory handling sensor/CSI bring-up and production-grade reliability fixes. This is a hands-on development role requiring deep kernel-space debugging concurrency management and hardware-software co-design.

What You Will Do

Develop and maintain Linux kernel camera and ISP drivers utilizing V4L2 the Media Controller framework and videobuf2 (vb2).
Integrate and debug MIPI CSI-2 sensors and image pipelines to ensure optimal routing for preview video and Zero Shutter Lag (ZSL) paths.
Implement and maintain robust firmware interfaces managing command/response queues interrupt processing and work-thread synchronization.
Manage the buffer lifecycle using MMAP DMA-BUF import/export zero-copy mechanisms and fence signaling to minimize latency.
Drive power management initiatives including suspend/resume runtime PM and clock/power sequencing robustness for camera hardware subsystems.
Diagnose and resolve complex kernel-space issues such as race conditions memory leaks deadlocks and frame pipeline regressions.
Build debug and observability tooling using debugfs sysfs ftrace tracepoints custom counters and system health metrics.
Maintain high code quality through rigorous code reviews and technical documentation while collaborating closely with chipset vendors/silicon partners camera sensor manufacturers and user-space camera framework teams.

Required Qualifications

10 years of embedded systems experience with a minimum of 5 years dedicated to Linux kernel driver development.
Expert-level C programming in kernel space including memory management locking primitives (mutexes spinlocks RCU) workqueues and interrupt handling.
Production-level experience with the Linux media stack (V4L2 ioctls Media Controller entities and videobuf2).
Hands-on experience with MIPI CSI-2 sensor and ISP bring-up.
Strong knowledge of DMA-BUF scatter-gather mapping cache coherency and kernel debugging tools (JTAG GDB ftrace lockdep).
Solid understanding of Linux power management (runtime PM and suspend/resume).

Preferred Qualifications

Familiarity with vendor-specific GPU driver stacks TTM memory models and firmware mailbox protocols.
Understanding of camera sensor controls exposure timing and 3A tuning pipelines.
Experience with automotive-grade reliability standards (such as ISO 26262).
A track record of active contributions to the upstream Linux kernel.