AMD Is Hiring Again For Their Linux - Client - Effort

After establishing a new organization within AMD last year focused on improving AMD client platforms on Linux, they are now hiring again for this endeavor.

While AMD has been ramping up their Linux staff on the server front given their EPYC successes, last February they also began hiring for Linux on the client side within "a new organization" at the company. That new organization is off the ground and they were able to add some notable hires last year and hit the ground running with both client fixes and new features / hardware enablement.

Those AMD Linux client efforts appear to be paying off already with seeing a number of laptop/SoC power management fixes in recent months/kernels, Yellow Carp (Rembrandt) support already in the k10temp driver where as traditionally AMD has been late to the game and only providing post-launch thermal monitoring support, and other efforts that will hopefully play out for Linux users/customers over the quarters to come on the client side... If you are a frequent Phoronix reader, you've likely seen many of their fruits covered in numerous articles over recent months. It's been nice seeing more AMD fixes and improvements directly from their engineers on the client side.

There have also been design wins for AMD on the client side that involve Linux support such as Valve's Steam Deck relying on a VanGogh APU while running their Arch Linux based SteamOS and also Tesla's latest Ryzen-powered in-car infotainment system. AMD Linux client efforts are moving in the right direction although there are still areas to improve upon such as better supporting the upstream open-source compilers, ensuring their new hardware enablment aligns more optimally for just not being in the mainline tree at launch but found within distribution kernels, and ideally to see more open-source firmware.

I was informed this morning that AMD is hiring again on the Linux client front. The job posting from the end of last week notes, "Step up into a relatively new organization built to engage more strategically and deeply with our commercial customers - specifically their architecture and engineering teams...As a key engineer on our team, you configure and tune Linux distribution packages to take advantage of AMD technologies on customer platforms. Analyze, configure, and propose changes to platform system firmware to allow the kernel and other services extract platform configuration and runtime information. Join a group of engineers collaborating with customers to help understand how the configuration and enablement of platform and software features fulfill end-to-end user scenarios in commercial platforms. Participate in planning the next generation CPU/APUs. Figure out how changes in the kernel upstream pipeline help meet the goals of new platforms."

The latest job post for an AMD Client Linux Systems Engineer is looking for a software engineer already experienced in this area and also having good knowledge of hardware and low-level debugging too. The position is for on-site in Austin, Texas.

Much of the verbage is the same as last year's AMD Linux client job postings, "Want to rebuild a kernel with optional components and build flags that can fine tune a kernel for a specific CPU and platform configuration? Want to contribute to the Linux ecosystem by adding & optimizing kernel features for OEM Laptop/Desktop/Workstation designs? This is the ideal opportunity!"

In addition to that job posting, outside of their Linux client organization they are also hiring on the Linux server front still for Linux networking I/O lead, Linux software system engineer, virtualization performance developer, Linux system software design engineer, and other jobs with an EPYC focus. (If applying, be sure to mention Phoronix!) It's good to see since Intel has traditionally hired far more Linux/open-source engineers than AMD.