Systems engineer Jobs in New York, NY

Staff Systems Engineer

Infrastructure / Distributed Systems | New York City | On-site

About the Company

We are representing a high-growth infrastructure technology company building a high-performance compute platform for demanding developer and AI workloads.

The company owns and operates significant bare-metal infrastructure and is solving complex problems across virtualization, distributed storage, workload orchestration, networking, and systems performance. Its platform supports large-scale production workloads where reliability, efficiency, and low-level optimization are critical.

This is a deeply technical engineering environment with a strong focus on systems design, performance, and operational excellence.

The Role

This is an opportunity to join the company as a Staff Systems Engineer and take significant ownership of the architecture and evolution of its core infrastructure platform.

You will work across distributed systems, virtualization, Linux, storage, and bare-metal compute, tackling problems that sit close to the kernel and have direct production impact.

The role is designed for a senior individual contributor who has previously architected and delivered critical infrastructure at scale. You will help define technical direction, lead complex engineering initiatives, and raise the bar for systems engineering across the wider team.

What You'll Do

• Own and drive architectural direction for critical infrastructure platforms running large-scale virtualized workloads across distributed bare-metal environments.
• Take responsibility for production outcomes including reliability, performance, scalability, and operational excellence.
• Design and build low-level systems involving Linux, virtualization, distributed storage, resource isolation, and infrastructure orchestration.
• Work at the kernel and filesystem level using technologies such as eBPF, cgroups, namespaces, and low-level I/O optimization.
• Identify performance bottlenecks and optimize compute and storage infrastructure for demanding production workloads.
• Lead technically complex infrastructure initiatives from initial problem definition through architecture, implementation, and production delivery.
• Operate effectively in ambiguous environments where both the problem and the appropriate technical solution need to be defined.
• Translate business and product priorities into longer-term infrastructure architecture and execution plans.
• Mentor experienced engineers and act as a technical force multiplier across the engineering organization.
• Help establish engineering standards and influence how the platform evolves as infrastructure capacity and workload complexity increase.

What We're Looking For

• 8+ years of experience in systems engineering, distributed infrastructure, or another closely related area.
• Significant experience designing, building, and operating large-scale production infrastructure.
• Strong understanding of Linux and low-level systems engineering.
• Experience working with bare-metal infrastructure, virtualization, distributed storage, or high-performance compute systems.
• Strong architectural judgment and a track record of owning technically critical systems from design through production.
• Experience improving the reliability, performance, or scalability of complex infrastructure.
• Ability to operate as a highly autonomous senior individual contributor.
• Experience influencing technical direction beyond your immediate area of ownership.
• Strong problem-solving skills in environments where requirements and solutions are not always clearly defined.
• A track record of raising engineering standards and supporting the development of other senior engineers.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Go, Rust, or C.
• Experience with virtualization technologies such as Firecracker, QEMU, or Cloud Hypervisor.
• Experience with distributed storage systems such as Ceph or comparable technologies.
• Deep familiarity with eBPF, cgroups, Linux namespaces, filesystems, or kernel-level performance optimization.
• Experience operating large fleets of physical servers or other bare-metal infrastructure.
• Previous experience in a fast-scaling infrastructure or developer-tools company.
• Experience joining a high-growth technology company at an early stage and helping its infrastructure scale significantly.
• Publications, conference presentations, patents, or meaningful open-source contributions relating to systems or infrastructure engineering.
• Exposure to infrastructure supporting CI/CD, developer tooling, sandboxed compute, or AI workloads.

Why This Role Is Exciting

• Staff-level technical ownership: Shape the architecture of infrastructure that sits at the core of the company's product.
• Genuinely difficult systems problems: Work across virtualization, Linux, storage, bare metal, and distributed compute rather than operating purely at the application layer.
• Significant production impact: Your decisions will directly affect platform performance, reliability, scalability, and infrastructure efficiency.
• Senior IC career path: This is a hands-on technical leadership position rather than a people-management role.
• High engineering influence: Lead projects where the right architecture is not predetermined and where Staff-level judgment matters.
• Rapidly evolving infrastructure: Help build systems that must continue scaling alongside increasing customer demand and new categories of compute-intensive workloads.
• Strong technical environment: Work alongside experienced infrastructure engineers with a high bar for systems design and execution.

Work Model

• Full-time position.
• On-site in New York City.
• Regular in-person collaboration is expected.
• Relocation assistance may be available for exceptional candidates.
• Open to eligible visa transfers, including OPT and H-1B transfers.

Apply now!