Kaushal Kumar

About Kaushal Kumar

I am a Staff Engineer specializing in AIX (UNIX) kernel development, live patching, and high-performance systems programming. My expertise spans kernel space and user space live updates, advanced process management, performance optimization, and robust concurrency handling.Over my career at IBM, NetApp, and Dell EMC, I’ve designed and implemented solutions for mission-critical systems — from optimizing lock mechanisms and memory management to enabling seamless live library updates with zero downtime. My work ensures high availability, stability, and scalability in enterprise environments.Key highlights include:Designing AIX kernel process management mechanisms for optimal scheduling, synchronization, and stability.Implementing pthread library live patching for continuous updates without service disruption.Developing performance optimizations such as 16MB page promotions to reduce TLB misses and boost CPU utilization.Creating core file generation mechanisms to capture critical diagnostics during live updates.WAFL filesystem performance tuning and customer escalation handling at scale.Skilled in C, C++, UNIX internals, multithreading, synchronization, memory management, performance profiling, and debugging tools like KDB, GDB, and Dbx.Passionate about solving complex low-level problems, enhancing system performance, and building resilient software for enterprise environments. Always open to collaborating with engineers and architects pushing the boundaries of system reliability.

Experience

1. System Software Engineer

   IBM

   Dec 2022 — Present · Bengaluru, IN

   Design and develop core AIX (UNIX) kernel process management mechanisms, focusing on scheduling, synchronization, and system stability at scale.Lead and contribute to AIX Live Library Update (LLU) internals, enabling zero-downtime shared library updates through robust process lifecycle and import management.Actively working on Live Library Update support for libpthreads, allowing pthread library upgrades while applications continue running, improving availability and operational reliability.Implemented core-dump generation support for failures during live library transitions, strengthening post-mortem diagnostics and system resiliency.Developed a process image memory optimization feature that groups and promotes pages to 16MB large pages under high load, significantly reducing TLB misses and improving CPU utilization.Own and maintain the AIX pthread library, including defect investigation, performance tuning, and delivery of new functionality.Contribute to Active System Optimizer (ASO) in AIX, enabling dynamic system tuning and runtime performance optimization.Improved lock word and synchronization mechanisms for high-frequency sleep/wake workloads, reducing contention and improving concurrency performance.

Education

• Sagar institute of science & technology

  Bachelor of Engineering - BE, Computer Science

  2014 — 2018

• National Institute of Technology Karnataka

  Master of Technology - MTech, Computational Mathematics

  2018 — 2020