Open at 2026-09-19263
Companies80
Opened0
Closed1
Remote24%
By sub-domain
| Sub-domain | Open | Opened | Closed | Remote |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Databases & Query Engines | 62 | 0 | 1 | 42% |
| Kernel & Drivers | 61 | 0 | 0 | 20% |
| Embedded & Firmware | 36 | 0 | 0 | 8% |
| Networking & Protocols | 29 | 0 | 0 | 34% |
| Storage & Filesystems | 27 | 0 | 0 | 4% |
| Performance & Observability | 27 | 0 | 0 | 15% |
| Compilers & Runtimes | 17 | 0 | 0 | 29% |
| Virtualization & Containers | 4 | 0 | 0 | 25% |
Languages named on open postings
| Language | Roles | Share of open roles |
|---|---|---|
| C++ | 132 | 50% |
| Rust | 94 | 36% |
| Go | 26 | 10% |
| Assembly | 9 | 3% |
| C | 9 | 3% |
| P4 | 2 | 1% |
| Zig | 1 | 0% |
Companies with the most open systems roles
| Company | Open | Opened this month |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | 29 | 0 |
| CoreWeave | 18 | 0 |
| Tenstorrent | 14 | 0 |
| Grafana Labs | 13 | 0 |
| Canonical | 12 | 0 |
| Cloudflare | 12 | 0 |
| Crusoe | 12 | 0 |
| Elastic | 12 | 0 |
| Cohere | 7 | 0 |
| Oxide Computer Company | 6 | 0 |
| Supabase | 6 | 0 |
| Cerebras Systems | 5 | 0 |
Compensation
5 of 263 open roles (2%) state compensation on the company’s own posting, and 5 state a machine-readable number. That is too small a sample to publish a salary distribution, so NearMetal does not publish one. No figure on this site is estimated, imputed, or averaged from a range NearMetal invented.
Method and sample
- Source: 266 roles from 80 companies, read from those companies’ own careers pages and approved applicant-tracking feeds, since 2026-08-04.
- A role is counted under one sub-domain — the one its own title files it under — so the sub-domain columns sum to the total rather than over-counting it.
- “Opened” is the month the company’s role entered the index; “closed” is the month it left. Both are observations of the source, not of the employer’s intent — NearMetal sees a posting when it first reads it, which may be long after the company published it.
- This is NearMetal’s index, not the market. It is a systems software index of 80 companies and should be read as one.
This month is still running. The figures move until it closes.
Reuse
Citing this
These figures may be quoted and charted freely with a link back to this page. The taxonomy and classification rules behind them are published on the about page.