Software Maintenance Engineer - RHEL

About the Job:

Red Hat is seeking an experienced, enterprise-level engineer with a strong background in Red Hat Enterprise Linux to join our team as a Software Maintenance Engineer in North America. In this role, you will provide technical support and sustaining engineering services to enterprise customers.

Unlike traditional software companies, Red Hat offers subscriptions that include unlimited support incidents, access to product documentation, security patches and updates, and upgrades to the latest versions of our software rather than pay-per-incident support.

As a Software Maintenance Engineer, you will work closely with customers, developers, and architects, collaborating with Red Hat engineering teams to solve complex technical issues. You’ll help demonstrate Red Hat’s value to our customers while developing deep expertise in software-defined storage and networking technologies.

This is a remote role for qualified applicants across the U.S. and Canada where Red Hat is registered to do business. The role is customer-facing and primarily requires availability during 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM Pacific Time, with occasional weekend shifts on a rotational schedule.

What You Will Do:

• Serve as the primary point of contact and technical advisor for customer inquiries about Red Hat networking offerings.

• Deliver exceptional customer experiences by applying deep troubleshooting, professional communication skills, and existing knowledge.

• Partner with Red Hat’s strategic cloud partners to resolve multi-vendor customer issues.

• Continuously develop your troubleshooting skills and stay current with the latest technology trends.

• Collaborate with engineering and development teams to address complex issues and drive creative solutions.

• Contribute to Red Hat’s global knowledge management system.

• Perform deep dives into complex networking issues.

• Mentor junior team members and collaborate with local and global teams to resolve challenging cases.

• Work with Red Hat’s ticketing systems and internal tools to provide direct customer support.

• Contribute to the open source community and the code of our offerings.

• Proactively utilize AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code) for code generation, auto-completion, and intelligent suggestions to accelerate development cycles and enhance code quality.

What You Will Bring

• 5+ years software engineering experience, including 3+ years with a focus on networking.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent professional experience.

• Strong Linux experience at the RHCSA or RHCE level.

• In-depth Linux internals knowledge, including kernel semantics (locking, RCU, memory allocation).

• Deep understanding of network protocols (TCP, UDP, IP, multicast) and network plumbing/SDNs (OpenShift, OVS, OVN, Geneve, VXLAN tunnels).

• Exposure to advanced protocols such as SCTP, MPTCP, and BGP.

• Expert skills in vmcore analysis to determine root causes of network stack crashes, including disassembly, interpreting data structures, and correlating with source code.

• Ability to reproduce and resolve complex networking bugs.

• Proficiency with Git, including version control, bisecting regressions, and contributing upstream commits.

• Experience formally documenting complex problems and solutions.

• Strong system administration experience and prior work in technical support or customer-facing roles.

• Deep expertise in packet capture and protocol analysis (e.g., Wireshark).

• Programming experience in C, Python, or Perl to create network-related test programs.

• Familiarity with Microsoft Azure, AWS, KVM is a plus.

• Proven troubleshooting and problem-solving skills.

• Ability to manage conflicting priorities, take initiative, and maintain a customer-focused mindset.

• Strong teamwork, collaboration, and communication skills, including mentoring junior engineers.

• Willingness to continuously learn and enhance technical and interpersonal skills.

• Excellent verbal and written English communication skills.

The following are considered a plus:

• Experience using GDB, crash, perf, strace, ftrace for deep debugging of userspace/kernelspace issues, including crashes and performance troubleshooting.

About Red Hat

Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterpriseopen source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver high-performing Linux, cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Spread across 40+ countries, our associates work flexibly across work environments, from in-office, to office-flex, to fully remote, depending on the requirements of their role. Red Hatters are encouraged to bring their best ideas, no matter their title or tenure. We're a leader in open source because of our open and inclusive environment. We hire creative, passionate people ready to contribute their ideas, help solve complex problems, and make an impact.

Inclusion at Red Hat
Red Hat’s culture is built on the open source principles of transparency, collaboration, and inclusion, where the best ideas can come from anywhere and anyone. When this is realized, it empowers people from different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences to come together to share ideas, challenge the status quo, and drive innovation. Our aspiration is that everyone experiences this culture with equal opportunity and access, and that all voices are not only heard but also celebrated. We hope you will join our celebration, and we welcome and encourage applicants from all the beautiful dimensions that compose our global village.

Equal Opportunity Policy (EEO)
Red Hat is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and an affirmative action employer. We review applications for employment without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, veteran status, genetic information, physical or mental disability, medical condition, marital status, or any other basis prohibited by law.

Red Hat does not seek or accept unsolicited resumes or CVs from recruitment agencies. We are not responsible for, and will not pay, any fees, commissions, or any other payment related to unsolicited resumes or CVs except as required in a written contract between Red Hat and the recruitment agency or party requesting payment of a fee.

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