Senior Software Engineer – Data Infrastructure

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Contribute to Backblaze’s data infrastructure platform, which underpins B2 Object Storage and Computer Backup services.

• Enhance automation, observability, and stability to ensure data durability.

• Boost throughput and implement architectural modifications to meet long-term service demands.

• Create and develop automation frameworks for the provisioning, configuration, and maintenance of fleet infrastructure.

• Design and expand observability stacks that encompass metrics, logs, traces, and alerts.

• Construct reporting tools, dashboards, and visualizations to monitor fleet health, capacity, and operational trends.

• Develop system health tools to identify failing hardware, configuration drift, and capacity issues.

• Facilitate technical design discussions and generate design documents that span multiple services and teams.

• Guide the development of significant features from design through implementation, including migrations and backfills.

• Collaborate with the on-call team to transform recurring tasks and incident findings into automation and enhanced signals.

⛳️ Requirements

• Over 7 years of backend development experience in an enterprise setting, utilizing an object-oriented or systems programming language (Java, Rust, C++, C#, Go, or similar).

• Proven experience in designing automation frameworks or platforms for other engineers.

• Background in constructing large-scale software systems operating on thousands of servers.

• Experience in creating automation or tools that are essential for other engineers on a daily basis, including internal platform services, operational tools, or deployment and configuration pipelines.

• Proficient knowledge of an observability stack (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, ELK, Datadog, or equivalent), encompassing service instrumentation and designing dependable alerts.

• Solid understanding of Linux fundamentals and comfort in operating within a bare-metal or hybrid environment rather than a fully managed cloud.

• Professional experience with AI-assisted development tools (Gemini, Cursor, Claude Code, or similar).

• Familiarity with all phases of the software development lifecycle, including design, implementation, testing, and deployment.

• Expertise in Java.

• Experience with configuration management or infrastructure-as-code tools (Ansible, Salt, Puppet, Chef, Terraform).

• Knowledge in designing SLOs and error budgets, or minimizing alert noise on a large-scale fleet.

• Experience with time-series databases and query languages like PromQL.

• Background in automating hardware lifecycle processes: burn-in, failure detection, drive replacement, and decommissioning.

• Experience in identifying and implementing performance enhancements, including CPU and IO improvements.

• Understanding of Linux internals and file systems.

• Familiarity with hard drive performance and optimization, including host-managed SMR.

• Experience in building and analyzing models, dashboards, or reports.

• Positive attitude and a commitment to getting the job done effectively.

• Strong motivation to work for a small, agile company.

• Eagerness to learn and adapt to rapidly evolving technologies and work environments.

• Strict adherence to best practices.

• Unwavering attention to detail.

• Excellent interpersonal skills with strong oral and written communication abilities.

• Outstanding troubleshooting and problem-solving capabilities.

🏝️ Benefits

• Family healthcare coverage, including dental and vision.

• Competitive salary along with a 401K plan.

• RSU grants for full-time team members.

• Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP).

• Flexible vacation policy.

• Maternity and paternity leave.

• MacBook Pro for work, plus a generous stipend to customize your workstation.

• Childcare bonus (for human children only).

• Support for fertility treatments.

• Learning and development programs.

• Commuter benefits.

• A culture that promotes a healthy work-life balance.