Software Engineer — Hypervisor & Virtualization Systems Engineering
Seattle, WA
Engineering /
Full-time /
Remote
Edera is looking for a deeply technical Hypervisor & Virtualization Systems Engineer to help push the boundaries of secure compute—from the earliest boot instructions in firmware through hardened virtual machines running modern container workloads.
You will own the full virtualization stack across BIOS/UEFI, bootloaders, hardware interfaces (TPM, ACPI, IOMMU), hypervisors (KVM, Xen), and guest isolation layers. This role blends deep systems knowledge with modern security principles and is perfect for someone who wants to design high-assurance systems that bridge low-level hardware interaction with the high-level demands of containerized orchestration platforms.
If you think of trust as something that starts at the first instruction—and not just at runtime—you’ll feel right at home here.
Key Responsibilities
- Design, harden, and maintain secure virtualization stacks using KVM, Xen, or similar hypervisors, including microVMs (e.g., Firecracker, Cloud Hypervisor).
- Build and validate the full boot chain—from BIOS/UEFI to bootloaders to kernel launch—with a focus on secure defaults, reproducibility, and measurable integrity.
- Implement and extend VM isolation technologies (e.g., nested virtualization, PVH, IOMMU, virtio, virtio-fs, SR-IOV, AMD SEV/Intel TDX).
- Architect secure guest/host interactions including virtualized device interfaces, interrupt remapping, and VFIO-based passthrough.
- Tune virtualization infrastructure across vCPU topology, memory ballooning, hugepages, NUMA alignment, and startup latency.
- Integrate low-level hardware security features (e.g., TPM, Secure Boot, ACPI) with higher-layer orchestrators such as Kubernetes.
- Collaborate with firmware, kernel, and container runtime teams to ensure coherent security postures and well-defined trust boundaries.
- Profile and optimize hypervisor performance across cold boot, suspend/resume, and runtime I/O, especially for edge-like or latency-sensitive environments.
- Contribute to internal test harnesses and CI pipelines, including hardware-in-the-loop and QEMU/KVM-based simulation for reproducible testing.
- Stay ahead of emerging threats and contribute to mitigations at both the host and guest levels.
Qualifications
- Minimum 5 years in systems-level engineering roles involving hypervisors, virtualization, or firmware.
- Deep experience with one or more VMMs: KVM, Xen, QEMU, Firecracker, or Cloud Hypervisor.
- Expert-level knowledge of low-level systems programming (C, Rust, Assembly, Makefiles).
- Solid understanding of boot chain architecture: BIOS/UEFI, coreboot, GRUB, kernel init, TPM, and Secure Boot.
- Proficient with virtualization subsystems: vCPU configuration, memory ballooning, virtio drivers, device passthrough, NUMA awareness, and nested virtualization.
- Hands-on experience integrating IOMMU, VFIO, SR-IOV, and interrupt remapping for high-security guest isolation.
- Familiar with Linux internals: memory management, I/O subsystems, init systems (systemd, busybox), and kernel lockdown.
- Experience building or debugging virtualized workloads in container orchestrators (e.g., Kubernetes + KubeVirt, Kata Containers, gVisor).
- Bonus: Experience contributing to or building secure attestation, firmware measurement, or certification pipelines (e.g., FIPS, Common Criteria).
$175,000 - $225,000 a year
Start-up vibe, big time benefits:
-Competitive Salary
-Unlimited PTO
-Equity
-100% medical coverage for you and your eligible dependents
Why Edera?
Make secure computing simple. Many believe that truly securing computing is an impossible undertaking. We don't. The products and innovations we release on the way to that end will change everything. We're just getting started. Come believe with us.
We operate as a team and exhibit these values and priorities when working together:
Embrace your whole self - We meet each other with humility, curiosity, and authenticity, embracing difficult challenges with courage and dedication to our mission, our humanity, and each other.
We don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk, together - Diversity is critical to our survival. We value diversity in all its forms, understanding that different perspectives drive our success and those in our community should feel confident in sharing and showing up as their complete selves.
We’ve got your back, for real - We prioritize honest, sincere communication and foster a culture of active gratitude, dignity, and empowerment, where everyone feels safe to contribute and innovate. We believe psychological safety is instrumental in supporting an innovative and successful company and community.
Master your craft, honor your limits - We believe in continuous learning and growth, supporting each other to outfail the competition without fostering a hero culture, relying on teamwork and empathy. We recognize that work is just one part of our lives and celebrate striving toward growth in all areas of life.
We don’t just dream it, we do it - We are dedicated to our mission and are not afraid to tackle difficult challenges, whether in our work, products, or team dynamics.
