Staff Systems Engineer

About the company

Our client is a fast-growing software company.

The role

Raydar is recruiting for this role on behalf of our client. Act as a senior individual contributor who shapes the architecture of large-scale infrastructure and is accountable for how it performs in production. Partner with engineering leadership on long-range planning and coach other senior engineers.

What you'll do

- Set the architectural direction for core infrastructure running across a worldwide pool of dedicated servers.

- Take accountability for uptime, speed and operational quality while capacity grows quickly.

- Work alongside engineering leadership to convert company goals into multi-year technical plans.

- Build low-level components close to the operating system, including storage layers, and tune performance for very large data volumes.

- Drive demanding infrastructure projects from early scoping through to launch, often where the goals and the approach are both undefined.

- Coach senior engineers, lift quality standards and multiply the impact of the wider team.

Requirements

What we're looking for

- Experience designing and running large-scale distributed systems at well-regarded organizations.

- Deep hands-on background in operating system internals, filesystems and Linux fundamentals, creating the foundation layer rather than relying on managed cloud services.

- History as a Staff or Principal-level individual contributor who meaningfully changed an engineering team's direction.

- Strong working fluency with AI coding agents in everyday development.

- Stable tenure in prior roles that shows concrete, delivered results.

- Background at a startup or high-growth company, comfortable with small teams and minimal supporting structure.

Bonus points

- Systems-level programming experience in a modern low-level language.

- Familiarity with virtualization technology.

- Experience with large-scale distributed storage.

- Public technical contributions, such as papers, patents or speaking engagements.

Benefits

Compensation and benefits

- Base salary: USD 280,000 to 380,000 per year

- Equity

- Health, dental and vision coverage

- Flexible time off

- Retirement plan with employer match

- Paid parental leave

Location and work model

- New York City, NY, United States

- On-site

- Full-time