NIC Device Driver Test Engineer
Location: San Jose, CAPosted On: 06/09/2026
Requirement Code: 73826
Requirement Detail
Expanding its strategic Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) to support a wider range of hardware, including extending the lifecycle of older hardware up to 10 years. As part of this initiative, we are seeking a highly skilled NIC Device Driver Test Engineer to help us build a modern, robust NIC device driver test suite.
The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in Linux NIC device drivers and enterprise virtualization networking. This role will focus on device driver testing at the component level to ensure enterprise-grade stability, performance, and compatibility across evolving AHV Linux kernels and our Flow networking stack.
*Key Responsibilities*
* Test Suite Architecture & Development: Design, develop, and execute a modern, component-level NIC driver test suite independent of monolithic AHV product testing.
* Kernel Compatibility Validation: Ensure NIC device drivers are compatible with past, current, and custom-configured LTS AHV Linux kernels (including upstream backports and modernized kmalloc() structures).
* Networking Stack Compatibility: Validate drivers against Linux networking enhancements, including the netdev subsystem, page_pool APIs, GRO/GSO improvements, packet steering, and interrupt balancing.
Virtualization & Flow Networking Integration: Test for functionality, performance, and compatibility with standard Linux networking components utilized by Nutanix Flow, including Open vSwitch (OVS), iptables/nftables, and Linux routing.
* Enterprise Readiness & Stress Testing: Conduct rigorous load and stress testing to guarantee high reliability, performance, and health monitoring capability across varying NIC hardware families.
*Preferred Qualifications (Nice-to-Have)*
Familiarity with industry-standard NIC certification testing, such as the Red Hat Hardware Certification Test Suite (redhat-certification) or VMware’s I/O Vendor Program (IOVP).
Experience in automated Python or Bash test framework development for component-level hardware testing.
Previous experience working directly with AHV, KVM, or similar hypervisors.
Understanding of backward and forward compatibility testing strategies for device drivers across hardware generations.