For the most part, it's just software. If you have the time and the interest, you can learn it like anything else. At some level, it requires an awareness of

For the most part, it's just software. If you have the time and the interest, you can learn it like anything else. At some level, it requires an awareness of how the hardware works(page tables/MMUs/IOMMUs, interrupts, SMP, NUMA, etc). I don't mean to downplay the investment, but if you're already an experienced software engineer you can get into it if it interests you. There is a different mindset among systems software programmers though. Reliability comes first, performance and functionality come second. It's a world away from hacking python scripts that only need to run once to perform their function.