Principal Systems Engineer

Blacksmith•New York City, NY

About The Position

We are looking for a Principal Engineer to set the technical direction for our core infrastructure, critical to the Blacksmith product. This role operates at the organization level, owning architecture, solving complex systems problems, and driving initiatives that shape how Blacksmith grows, performs, and remains reliable. 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.

Requirements

Deep familiarity with virtualization technologies such as Firecracker, QEMU, or Cloud Hypervisor, and an understanding of the tradeoffs between them.
Experience with distributed storage systems (e.g., Ceph) and a strong grasp of low-level file system performance, I/O tuning, and storage reliability at scale.
Comfort working at the kernel and filesystems level: experience with eBPF, cgroups, namespaces, or similar Linux primitives.
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 systems-level concepts to engineers, leadership, and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

Own and drive the 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.