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Open Source Developer Jobs
Getting paid to work on open source software is a dream for many developers, and it's more attainable than ever. Browse open source developer jobs at foundations, commercial open source companies, and tech giants who fund upstream contributions.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Yes, many companies employ engineers specifically to contribute to open source projects. These include commercial open source vendors (Red Hat, Canonical, SUSE, HashiCorp), cloud providers funding projects they depend on, Linux Foundation member companies, and tech giants like Google, Meta, and Microsoft with dedicated open source teams.
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Major projects with paid contributors include the Linux kernel, GNOME, KDE, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Python, Rust, Node.js, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, and many more. The Linux kernel is supported by hundreds of employed developers from companies including Intel, Red Hat, Google, Samsung, and Arm.
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The best path is to become an active contributor first, submit pull requests, fix bugs, write documentation, and participate in community discussions. Companies hiring for open source roles heavily favour candidates with an existing track record of upstream contributions. GitHub is your primary portfolio for this career path.
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A developer advocate (or developer relations engineer) represents an open source project or platform to external developers, writing blog posts, creating tutorials, giving conference talks, and supporting the community. These roles sit at the intersection of engineering and marketing and are a growing segment of open source employment.