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Senior Hypervisor Engineer

AI Summary
Nebius is seeking a senior systems engineer to extend and maintain the QEMU/KVM virtualization stack for its AI cloud platform. The role focuses on emulated I/O performance, VM resource distribution, guest support, platform and storage integration, and low-level hypervisor security. Candidates need strong C and Linux systems programming expertise, with at least three years of practical QEMU/KVM experience and knowledge of x86 virtualization internals. The engineer will contribute upstream, diagnose complex issues, and collaborate across platform teams and the open-source community. Coding interviews are part of the selection process.
Remote from
Europe
Salary
Undisclosed
Employment
Full Time
Experience
Senior
Published
Apply before
6 Dec 2026
Listing views
19
Application actions
2
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Opportunity details

About this role.

About Nebius:

Nebius is leading a new era in cloud infrastructure for the global AI economy. We are building a full-stack AI cloud platform that supports developers and enterprises from data and model training through to production deployment, without the cost and complexity of building large in-house AI/ML infrastructure.

Built by engineers, for engineers. From large-scale GPU orchestration to inference optimization, we own the hard problems across compute, storage, networking and applied AI.

Listed on Nasdaq (NBIS) and headquartered in Amsterdam, we have a global footprint with R&D hubs across Europe, the UK, North America and Israel. Our team of 1,500+ includes hundreds of engineers with deep expertise across hardware, software and AI R&D.

The role

We’re looking for a Senior Hypervisor Engineer to contribute to the development of our hyperscaler platform.
The Hypervisor team supports and develops the parts of the Cloud platform that directly affect the KVM hypervisor and QEMU device emulator. We understand the granular details of hardware virtualization and device emulation, paying close attention to performance and protection against untrusted code.
You will work on substantial extensions for the QEMU/KVM virtualization stack in close cooperation with the opensource community.

In this position, your responsibility will be to:

  • Optimize I/O for emulated disk and network devices
  • Integrate the hypervisor with other platform services and storage facilities for user data
  • Efficiently distribute resources between virtual machines
  • Improve guest system support
  • Advance the cutting-edge of open source virtualization
  • Provide low-level security for the hypervisor and emulator
  • Provide general support, fix bugs, and monitor the upstream
  • Collaborate with other team members and stakeholders

We expect you to have:

  • 5+ years of professional software engineering experience
  • Fluent in C programming language
  • 3+years of experience with Linux
  • At least 3 years of engineering experience with QEMU/KVM
  • General understanding of x86-compatible systems (virtual memory, interrupts, privilege rings)
  • Experience writing general system code in user mode for Linux, including debugging, analysis, and optimization tools (the emulator is built on the user mode system process for Linux)

It would be an added bonus if you had:

  • Aсcepted patches in Linux Kernel or QEMU/KVM
  • Experience working with Linux kernel
  • Some experience with ARMv8, including virtualization extensions
  • Understanding of PCI, SCSI, and ACPI
  • Experience working with the Linux kernel
  • Excellent communication skills for cross-team collaboration
  • Strong work ethic

We conduct coding interviews as part of the process.

Benefits & Perks:

  • Competitive compensation
  • Career growth and learning opportunities
  • Flexibility and ownership
  • Collaborative and innovative culture
  • Opportunity to work on impactful AI projects
  • International environment and talented teams

What’s it like to work at Nebius:

Fast moving – Bold thinking – Constant growth – Meaningful impact – Trust and real ownership – Opportunity to shape the future of AI

Equal Opportunity Statement:

Nebius is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace and to providing equal employment opportunities in all aspects of employment. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, ancestry, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

Applicants must be authorized to work in the country in which they apply and will be required to provide proof of employment eligibility as a condition of hire.

If you need accommodations during the application process, please let us know.

Apply now >

This job listing has been manually reviewed by the Jobicy Trust & Safety Team for compliance with our posting guidelines, including verification of the company's legitimacy, accuracy of job details, clarity of remote work policy, and absence of misleading or fraudulent content.

Role DNA

A quick view of the complexity, pace, ownership and collaboration implied by the job description.

Job Complexity

5/5
EasyHard

Pace & Pressure

4/5
RelaxedFast-paced

Autonomy Level

4/5
GuidedFull ownership

Communication Load

4/5
IndependentCollaborative
AI insightThis is a deeply specialized systems role involving hypervisor internals, device emulation, performance optimization, and security boundaries for untrusted workloads. Success requires production-level C/Linux expertise and substantial hands-on QEMU/KVM experience.

Salary analysis

Estimated compensation compared with the broader US market for similar roles.

Estimated job median (per year)Market rate
$155,000
US market range (per year)$130k–$190k
AI insightThe yearly pay period is inferred from the job context; it was not explicitly stated by the employer. No employer salary range is disclosed. The annual figures are AI estimates in USD for a senior QEMU/KVM and Linux virtualization engineer; the yearly cadence is inferred from the senior full-time engineering role.

Core skills

Skills and capabilities most closely associated with this opportunity.

Sample interview questions
How would you investigate high disk-I/O latency for a QEMU guest?

I would first reproduce and measure the issue with host and guest metrics, then use tools such as perf, ftrace, QEMU tracing, and iostat to locate queueing or CPU bottlenecks. I would inspect the guest driver, virtio path, QEMU block layer, backend storage behavior, and scheduler configuration before validating improvements with representative workloads.

What isolation risks are important when running untrusted virtual-machine workloads?

Key risks include guest-to-host escape through hypervisor or device-emulation vulnerabilities, unsafe parsing of guest-controlled inputs, memory-safety issues, excessive resource consumption, and insecure device exposure. I would prioritize minimal privileges, strict input validation, sandboxing, timely upstream patching, resource limits, and defense-in-depth controls.

Explain how KVM and QEMU work together to run a virtual machine.

KVM provides kernel-level hardware virtualization support and executes guest CPU instructions directly when possible. QEMU operates primarily in user space, providing machine configuration and device emulation, while communicating with KVM for vCPU execution and handling exits that require emulation or userspace intervention.

How would you approach improving network-device emulation performance?

I would profile packet processing and identify costs in copies, exits, interrupts, descriptor handling, and locking. Depending on the architecture, I would improve batching, reduce unnecessary copies, tune virtqueue handling, use efficient event notification, and carefully benchmark throughput, latency, CPU utilization, and correctness under load.

Describe a productive approach to contributing a fix upstream to QEMU or the Linux kernel.

I would isolate the issue, create a minimal reproducible test, and prepare a focused patch that follows project conventions. I would include a clear commit message, tests or validation evidence, respond constructively to review feedback, and ensure the change is maintainable and does not regress supported architectures or configurations.

This analysis is generated from the job description. Salary estimates, role characteristics and sample answers are guidance, not employer-provided facts.
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