Staff Product Engineer

Blacksmith; New York (NY); On-site; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Vision, and Dental insurance

Competitive base + equity

401K match

Unlimited PTO

Annual offsite

Early-exercise stock options

12 weeks fully paid parental leave (U.S.)

Job summary

Blacksmith in New York is seeking a Staff Product Engineer to set the technical direction for new AI native developer tooling products. In this high-impact role, you will drive the architectural vision, mentor engineers, and oversee production outcomes. Ideal candidates have expertise in building beloved products and a strong track record of influencing technical direction. The company offers competitive compensation, unlimited PTO, and full parental leave benefits, fostering a dynamic and innovative team environment.

Qualifications

• Experience in setting and leading technical direction of a product from an early stage.
• Ability to explain complex technical concepts to various stakeholders.
• Track record of leading through influence while being an individual contributor.

Responsibilities

• Own and drive the architectural direction for new product(s).
• Translate business strategy into technical roadmaps and execution plans.
• Drive the development of products from 0-1.
• Accountable for production outcomes including reliability and performance.
• Mentor senior engineers and act as a force multiplier.

Skills

Expertise in building products

Power user of coding agents

Strong communication skills

Job description

• We're building high performance infrastructure for the act of shipping software. Our first product helps companies run GitHub Actions substantially faster and cheaper by owning and operating our own global fleet of bare-metal machines rather than renting generic cloud VMs.
• Today, we orchestrate tens of millions of Firecracker VMs each month, running CI for 2,500+ companies and hit >$10M in ARR in less than 2 years.
• We operate thousands of bare-metal machines across multiple regions, regularly schedule 100k+ vCPUs concurrently, and run a petabyte-scale Ceph cluster that we manage ourselves.
• We’ve raised $13.5M across Seed and Series A, led by Google Ventures (GV), and we’re intentionally building a small, but exceptional team.
• Blacksmith was founded by a team with deep systems and scaling experience, including building search/ads infrastructure at Faire, and operating large distributed systems at Cockroach Labs. Our GTM is led by Jon Boyer, formerly Head of Sales at Zapier.
• We’re now extending the same CI infrastructure into a broader platform: background coding agents, agents owning the QA loop etc.

The Staff Product Engineer at Blacksmith

We are looking for a Staff Product Engineer to set the technical direction for our new product(s). This role operates at the organization level, owning architecture, solving complex product problems, and driving 0-1 product initiatives that shape how Blacksmith grows and continues to excite our customers.

You will be one of the key technical authorities and a force multiplier at Blacksmith. You’ll raise engineering standards across the team, mentor senior talent and own production outcomes.

This is a high impact, hands‑on technical leader role.

What you’ll be doing

• Own and drive the architectural direction for our new product(s). These new products don’t exist in the industry today. You will be designing and building the next generation of AI native developer tooling.
• Translate business and product strategy into long‑term technical roadmaps and execution plans.
• Drive the development of these products from 0-1.
• Accountable for production outcomes, including reliability, performance, and operational excellence.
• Mentor senior engineers and act as a force multiplier.
• Operate effectively in ambiguous problem spaces where both the problem and the solution need to be defined.

You’re a good fit if you have

• Expertise in building products that customers love. You’ll have come from a background where you have set and led the technical direction of a product from an early stage and developed that product through to one which is recognized industry wide as delivering an exceptional customer experience.
• Are a power user of coding agents. Our team embodies the ethos of a team that builds background agents. We operate at the forefront of agentic development and have built a best in class standard for agentic coding. You will help us further leverage these tools.
• Track record of leading through influence and shaping technical direction while operating as an individual contributor.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to engineers, leadership, and non‑technical stakeholders.

Compensation and benefits

• Medical, Vision, and Dental insurance.
• Competitive base + equity.
• 401K match.
• Unlimited PTO.
• Annual offsite.
• Early‑exercise stock options.
• Unlimited agent tokens.
• 12 weeks fully paid parental leave (U.S.).