Senior Systems Engineer
Full-time
On-site
New York City, NY
$200K - $300K
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Pipeline
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Interview process
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Ryan Wilson
Ryan Wilson
Founding Recruiter
Somewhat engaged
Bottom 45% of hiring managers
Time to first action
31 hours
Reply time
3 days
Active days
4 days
Feedback quality
Clear
Latest announcement
· Sep 14, 2026
still looking for more candidates on these roles. running a 2 week, 4 stage interview loop. we could easily hire 4-6 of these roles by the end of the year if we see the right candidates.
Role highlights
Hiring goal
1 - 5 candidates
Recruiter activity
Recruiter activity on this role is low
No final round interviews
There currently aren't any candidates in final round interviews or offer stage
Why candidates should join
Rocket-ship growth trajectory: Blacksmith hit ~$10M ARR in under 2 years and has already 5X'd revenue since the start of 2026. They're tripling compute capacity in the coming weeks — you'd be joining at an inflection point where your work directly scales the business.
World-class engineering team: The team includes former leads from Google's Colossus (exabyte-scale file system) and founding engineers from Cockroach Labs. You'd work alongside people who've built some of the most complex distributed systems in the world.
Massive technical scale with startup speed: They orchestrate tens of millions of Firecracker VMs monthly, schedule 100k+ vCPUs concurrently, and run a petabyte-scale Ceph cluster — all self-managed on bare metal. This isn't toy infrastructure; it's real systems work at serious scale.
Strong IC impact — no management overhead: You'd report directly to the technical co-founders and operate as a senior IC. No layers of management. Your work shapes the infrastructure direction immediately.
Expanding platform beyond CI: Blacksmith is extending into agent sandboxes and building their own background coding agent. You'd help architect the next generation of the platform — not just maintain what exists.
Top-tier compensation: $200K–$300K base with seven-figure equity packages for the right candidates. Plus medical/dental/vision, 401K match, unlimited PTO, early-exercise options, and 12 weeks paid parental leave.
Backed by elite investors: $58.5M raised from GV and Peak XV Capital. The company is well-capitalized and growing fast without burning through headcount — they're intentionally small and exceptional.
Suggested outreach
Intake call
Recorded by Parascribe
Company Overview
Blacksmith is a fast-growing startup, focusing on selective hiring for specific infrastructure needs.
The team is relatively small, with plans to expand significantly by the end of the year.
Role Requirements
Hiring for a Staff Systems Engineer to support significant infrastructure scaling.
Looking for 1 to 5 hires, focusing on senior individual contributors.
Candidate Requirements
Must have experience in low-level systems; tech stack agnostic but requires mastery in orchestrating AI agents.
Preferred candidates from prestigious organizations with a track record of significant impact.
Compensation and Benefits
Salary range: $280,000 to $380,000, with flexibility for exceptional candidates.
Competitive equity offerings, potentially valued in seven figures.
Work Arrangement and Logistics
Relocation assistance available for high-caliber candidates; visa transfers possible but no new visa sponsorships.
Ideal Candidate Profile
Background in early-stage startups or prestigious tech companies, with a strong history of building impactful systems.
Red flags include frequent job changes without clear reasons and primarily DevOps/SRE backgrounds.
Interview Process
Initial screen with Ryan, followed by three technical interviews and an in-person session with the team and founders.
Exceptional candidates receive an additional early-stage founder conversation.
Pain Points and Hiring Motivation
Significant scaling of infrastructure necessitates hiring; current infrastructure runs over 22 million CI jobs weekly.
Looking to triple infrastructure capacity to support big enterprise customers.
Technical Requirements
Experience with low-level languages like Go, Rust, or C; must excel in AI agent orchestration.
Tech stack is secondary; focus is on ability to integrate and manage complex systems.
Requirements
By tier
By category
Calibrate a candidate in Parabot. to see how well they fit the requirements.
Dealbreaker
Work experience
Built and owned large-scale distributed systems at a startup or a small, high-ownership team — not inside a large, mature org (big tech, enterprise software, banks).
Updated
Hard skills
Low-level systems work (kernel, filesystems, Linux primitives) — built the primitives, not assembled them on top of cloud services
Updated
Baseline
Seniority
5+ years of experience in systems engineering or distributed systems development
Work experience
2+ years at an early-stage or high-ownership startup where they owned a system end-to-end as it scaled
Updated
Hard skills
Virtualization technologies (Firecracker, QEMU, or Cloud Hypervisor)
Updated
Distributed storage systems at scale (e.g., Ceph)
Updated
Mastery of AI coding agents for development workflows
Updated
Nice-to-have
Work experience
Founded or scaled a startup that achieved recognition
Updated
Hard skills
Systems programming in Go, Rust, or C/C++
Updated
Configuration management tools (Ansible, Puppet, Chef)
Updated
Traits to avoid
DevOps/SRE/platform profile — operates and configures infrastructure (Terraform, K8s, CI/CD) rather than building the systems underneath
Updated
Job-hopper with short tenures and no demonstrated delivered impact
Updated
Domain-mismatched systems work — Web3/crypto, pure research, data engineering/pipelines, fintech-only backends
Updated
Pipeline
Inbox
0candidates
Recruiter Screen - 30 minutes
5candidates
Technical Interview 1 - 1 hour
0candidates
Technical Interview 2 - 1 hour
0candidates
On-Site Interview - Full day
0candidates
CEO Final Chat - 30 minutes
0candidates
Offer
0candidates
Hired
0candidates
Recent Activity
Changed status of Candidate #4 from Submitted to Rejected
4 days ago
Changed status of Candidate #3 from Submitted to First round
6 days ago
Changed status of Candidate #2 from Submitted to First round
12 days ago
Changed status of Candidate #1 from Submitted to First round
13 days ago
About this role
What we're looking for:
We need someone with 5+ years of experience building and scaling low-level distributed systems who has delivered meaningful, zero-to-one infrastructure at a prestigious organization. You should be comfortable working in a fast-paced, early-stage startup environment (in-person 5 days/week in NYC) and have a track record of materially impacting the trajectory of engineering teams and infrastructure at scale. Bonus points if you've founded or been early at a startup that grew into a recognized leader, or have publications, patents, or conference talks to your name.
What you'll do:
Design, build, and scale distributed systems infrastructure that orchestrates tens of millions of Firecracker VMs monthly across a global fleet of bare-metal machines
Take ownership of critical systems challenges as compute capacity triples — including storage, networking, and scheduling at petabyte scale
Work closely with the technical co-founders and a small, elite engineering team to solve hard infrastructure problems from first principles
Develop and optimize performance-critical systems using low-level languages (Go, Rust, C/C++) with a focus on efficiency, correctness, and reliability
Lead infrastructure projects end-to-end — from design through production — that directly enable large enterprise customers and new product capabilities (agent sandboxes, background coding agents)
Leverage and orchestrate AI coding agents to accelerate development velocity and push the boundaries of what's possible with autonomous engineering workflows
Key signals we're looking for:
Built and owned something significant at a prestigious, recognizable organization — not just managed existing infrastructure
Experience with distributed storage systems (e.g., Ceph, MinIO) or similar large-scale data systems
Strong IC who can change the direction and trajectory of the engineering team around them
Comfortable with ambiguity and building from scratch in a startup that's scaling rapidly (~$10M ARR in <2 years)
Proficient with modern AI-assisted development workflows and agent orchestration
This is NOT a DevOps/SRE role. We need someone who has built systems themselves, not just managed hyperscale infrastructure.
Role details
Salary
$200K - $300K
On-site work policy
In-office 5 days a week in New York City. The team values in-person collaboration and candidates should expect to work on-site daily with a small, tight-knit engineering team.
Full-time position
Location
New York City, NY
Equity
Competitive equity
Visa sponsorship details
Open to visa transfers (e.g. OPT, H1B transfers)
Additional visa sponsorship details
Blacksmith can do visa transfers but cannot sponsor net-new visas due to processing timelines. Candidates must already hold a valid work visa that can be transferred.
Hiring Count
Looking to hire 1 - 5 candidates for this role
Tech stack
Go, Rust, C, C++, Zig, Firecracker, Ceph, Linux, Ansible, Bare-metal infrastructure, Distributed systems, AI coding agents
Requirements
By tier
By category
Calibrate a candidate in Parabot. to see how well they fit the requirements.
Dealbreaker
Work experience
Built and owned large-scale distributed systems at a startup or a small, high-ownership team — not inside a large, mature org (big tech, enterprise software, banks).
Updated
Hard skills
Low-level systems work (kernel, filesystems, Linux primitives) — built the primitives, not assembled them on top of cloud services
Updated
Baseline
Seniority
5+ years of experience in systems engineering or distributed systems development
Work experience
2+ years at an early-stage or high-ownership startup where they owned a system end-to-end as it scaled
Updated
Hard skills
Virtualization technologies (Firecracker, QEMU, or Cloud Hypervisor)
Updated
Distributed storage systems at scale (e.g., Ceph)
Updated
Mastery of AI coding agents for development workflows
Updated
Nice-to-have
Work experience
Founded or scaled a startup that achieved recognition
Updated
Hard skills
Systems programming in Go, Rust, or C/C++
Updated
Configuration management tools (Ansible, Puppet, Chef)
Updated
Traits to avoid
DevOps/SRE/platform profile — operates and configures infrastructure (Terraform, K8s, CI/CD) rather than building the systems underneath
Updated
Job-hopper with short tenures and no demonstrated delivered impact
Updated
Domain-mismatched systems work — Web3/crypto, pure research, data engineering/pipelines, fintech-only backends
