Staff Systems Engineer: Architect Core Infra & Scale

Blacksmith; New York (NY); On-site; USD 210,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Blacksmith is seeking a Staff Systems Engineer to set the technical direction for our core infrastructure. You will own architecture, drive reliability, and mentor senior engineers while delivering production outcomes at scale.

You will translate business needs into long-term technical roadmaps and lead critical infrastructure platforms, operating as a hands-on individual contributor in a fast-growing CI infrastructure company.

Qualifications

• Experience architecting large-scale infrastructure and ownership of production reliability.
• Ability to drive long-term technical roadmaps from business strategy.
• Proven track record mentoring senior engineers and enabling scale.
• Excellent communication across technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Own and drive architectural direction for critical infrastructure platforms.
• Translate business and product strategy into long-term technical roadmaps and execution plans.
• 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.

Skills

Virtualization tech

Firecracker

QEMU

Cloud Hypervisor

Ceph storage

Linux kernel / FS

eBPF

Cgroups

Namespaces

Technical leadership

Strong communication

Tools

Firecracker

QEMU

Cloud Hypervisor

Ceph

Job description

Blacksmith is seeking a Staff Systems Engineer to set the technical direction for our core infrastructure. You will own architecture, drive reliability, and mentor senior engineers while delivering production outcomes at scale.

You will translate business needs into long-term technical roadmaps and lead critical infrastructure platforms, operating as a hands-on individual contributor in a fast-growing CI infrastructure company.