Senior 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. Hands-on senior individual contributor who designs and delivers core infrastructure software for a large compute environment. Works side by side with technical leadership and a compact group of engineers, with ownership from initial concept through live operation. What you'll do - Architect, build and scale infrastructure software that runs across a large pool of physical servers. - Take charge of difficult storage, networking and scheduling problems as demand and capacity grow quickly. - Partner with technical leaders and a small team of engineers to solve open-ended infrastructure problems from the ground up. - Write and tune performance-sensitive code in systems languages, prioritizing speed, correctness and dependability. - Drive infrastructure initiatives from first design to production rollout, supporting new product capabilities and bigger accounts. - Use AI coding assistants to speed up delivery and automate parts of the engineering workflow. Requirements What we're looking for - At least 5 years of experience creating and growing distributed software close to the operating system. - Direct experience with operating-system internals such as kernels, file systems or Linux building blocks, where you built core components yourself instead of stitching together managed cloud services. - A history of owning substantial distributed systems in a startup or a small team with high autonomy, rather than in a large established company. - Working knowledge of virtualization technology, such as QEMU or a lightweight hypervisor. - Experience with distributed storage at significant scale. - At least 2 years in an early-stage or high-autonomy company, owning a system from start to finish while it grew. - Strong, practical fluency using AI coding agents in daily development. - Comfort with ambiguity and with building things from nothing in a fast-moving setting. - A strong individual contributor who can influence the direction of those around them. - This is a builder role rather than a DevOps or SRE position. Bonus points - Systems programming experience in a language such as Go or Rust. - Familiarity with configuration management tooling. - Experience founding or scaling a well-known startup, or a record of publications, patents or conference talks. Benefits Compensation and benefits - Base salary: USD 200,000 to 300,000 per year - Equity - Health, dental and vision coverage - Retirement plan with employer match - Flexible time off - Paid parental leave Location and work model - New York City, New York, United States - On-site, 5 days per week in the office - Full-time