Senior Systems Engineer
Job Summary
We are seeking a Senior Systems Engineer to design, build, and scale low-level distributed systems infrastructure that orchestrates tens of millions of virtual machines monthly. This role is critical in a fast-growing startup environment where you will solve complex infrastructure challenges from first principles and directly impact the trajectory of the engineering organization. The position requires full-time, in-person work in New York City and a proven track record of building significant systems at scale.
Essential Functions
- Design, build, and scale distributed systems infrastructure orchestrating tens of millions of virtual machines monthly across global bare-metal fleets
- Own critical systems challenges including storage, networking, and scheduling as compute capacity grows to petabyte scale
- Collaborate directly with technical co-founders and a small elite engineering team to solve hard infrastructure problems
- Develop and optimize performance-critical systems using low-level languages with emphasis on efficiency, correctness, and reliability
- Lead infrastructure projects end-to-end from design through production to enable enterprise customers and new product capabilities
- Leverage and orchestrate AI coding agents to accelerate development velocity and advance autonomous engineering workflows
Required Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience building and owning large-scale distributed systems at recognized organizations
- Strong individual contributor background with demonstrated ability to influence engineering team direction
- Experience in early-stage startup environments with meaningful impact and tenure
- Proficiency in low-level systems engineering including kernel, filesystems, and Linux primitives
- Mastery of AI coding agents and modern AI-assisted development workflows
- Hands-on systems programming experience in Go, Rust, or C/C++
- Comfort with ambiguity and building infrastructure from scratch in a rapidly scaling environment
Preferred Qualifications
- Founding or early employee experience at a startup that grew into a recognized leader
- Publications, patents, or conference talks in relevant technical areas
- Experience with virtualization technologies such as Firecracker, QEMU, or similar
- Background working with distributed storage systems at significant scale
Technical Skills
- Go
- Rust
- C/C++
- Firecracker
- Ceph
- Linux kernel and primitives
- Ansible
- Bare-metal infrastructure
- Distributed systems design and scaling
- AI coding agents and orchestration
Education & Certifications
Relevant technical experience is prioritized over formal degrees. Advanced knowledge of systems programming, distributed computing, and low-level infrastructure is required.
Compensation & Benefits
Compensation for this role ranges from $200,000 to $300,000 base salary depending on experience and qualifications. This is a direct hire, full-time onsite position in New York City.