About The Job
The Red Hat Experience Engineering (XE) team is looking for a Principal Software Maintenance Engineer to help lead a new team aimed at improving the long-term product experience of our Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) customers. In this role, you will work closely with Product Engineering to deliver on extended product maintenance work, including handling defects, bugs, and CVEs in any extended life streams of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Focused on product development that goes beyond the normal 6 month maintenance phase of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) minor releases, you will actively lead EUS, TUS, E4S, AMC, and ELS lifestreams. You’ll be actively leading all aspects of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) maintenance. You will co-lead our patch review process, the development and execution of backports and test plans, and the creation of automation tools to improve the efficiency, flexibility, and quality of Red Hat’s patch delivery to customers.
To succeed in this role, you’ll need to have the ability to think creatively and adapt to rapid change, as well as the ability to collaboratively lead engineers for innovation in process and quality efficiency.
What You Will Do
- Contribute to the vision and innovation of new Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product maintenance offerings, aiming to make Red Hat a global leader in long-term product experience
- Help lead daily activities of product maintenance engineering teams, serving as a regional and global expert on pressing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product issues
- Resolve and proactively address critical issues that have an impact on long-term regional or global business success of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
- Work within the complete Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) solutions portfolio and be responsible for the delivery of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) updates to the maintenance streams
- Lead developer and QE counterparts, product and project manager, and release engineering teams across the globe to ensure the development and delivery of fixes meet the schedule requirements and high quality standards expected and required by Red Hat customers
- Lead the design of sustaining engineering workflow and its evolution over time to improve the customer experience and efficiency of long term product maintenance
- Lead teams in the diagnosis of root cause of complex failures
- Backport and test CVE and bug fixes to stable release streams
- Develop, maintain, and monitor tests and onboard automated tests into a continuous integration workflow as much as possible
- Develop onboarding and training for new team members
- Mentor junior team members
What You Will Bring
- Outstanding debugging, troubleshooting, and analytical skills
- 6+ years of experience in quality engineering or software engineering
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related engineering field, or relevant professional experience
- Experience leading engineers in collaboration to solve complex problems
- Familiarity with scripting using Python and/or Bash, etc.
- Experience developing software using C
- Experience committing code at scale on complex source control structures
- Ability to remain patient and diligent when working on detailed tasks
- Ability to collaborate and communicate effectively with a global team
- Multi-tasking skills and the ability to work under tight deadlines
- Fluent written and verbal communication skills in English
Experience With The Following Are Considered a Plus
- Experience collaborating in open source software communities
- Solid skills and background in Linux kernel building, development, and testing
- Solid skills and background in userspace building, development, and testing
- Experience with software test planning, test cases design, test script automation, and documentation
- Experience with cloud computing, e.g., AWS, Microsoft Azure, EC2
- Experience using GitLab and Git in contributor and maintainer roles
- Experience with CVE systems and related solution delivery processes
- Ability to collaborate with development engineers, understand priorities, understand code risk, meet deadlines, have a strong sense of responsibility, and work with minimal supervision