Cluster & Systems Capacity Engineer

About Backblaze

Backblaze is the object storage leader in the open cloud movement, fueling customer success with cloud storage built purposefully to unlock budgets, unburden administrators, and unleash innovators. Together with our partners, we’re helping customers break free from the restrictive, overpriced legacy solutions that hold them back, and blaze forward with the full power of the open cloud in their hands.

Founded in 2007, we scaled the business with less than $3 million in outside funding until 2021, when we did a traditional IPO on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Today, Backblaze generates over $100m in revenue and is the leading specialized storage cloud - managing over three billion gigabytes of data storage for 500K+ customers in 175+ countries, including businesses, developers, IT professionals, and individuals.

But while there is a lot to celebrate in our past, there is almost as much opportunity ahead of us. Backblaze is seeking a highly analytical, systems-oriented Cluster & Systems Capacity Engineer to drive the planning, forecasting, deployment, and optimization of hardware infrastructure across our global cloud storage platform. 

About the Role:

This role ensures that Backblaze’s storage clusters, compute systems, and network infrastructure scale reliably, cost-efficiently, and ahead of demand. You will build and maintain predictive models, ensure consistent supply and demand alignment, and partner cross-functionally to inform strategic investment and deployment decisions. .

This is a high-impact role within Cloud Operations, directly contributing to service availability, durability, performance, margin optimization, and long-term platform scalability.

Key Responsibilities:

Capacity Planning & Forecasting

• Develop and maintain short, medium, and long-term capacity demand and hardware deployment forecasts across storage, compute, and network domains within the platform
• Build predictive models that translate business demand signals into infrastructure requirements using historical utilization, growth trends, product sales plans, hardware lifecycle roadmaps, and other key business inputs
• Partner with Infrastructure, Production, and Network Engineering teams to align capacity plans with system design and scaling initiatives
• Develop and automate forecasting pipelines, simulation calculators and tools, and capacity dashboards to improve data quality, reduce manual analysis, and provide stakeholders clear visibility into platform usage and cluster health metrics

Cluster Performance & Resource Optimization

• Monitor and analyze cluster and system-level utilization and performance across CPU, memory, IOPS, and network resources
• Adjust deployment plans and recommended configurations in real-time to maintain adequate headroom and system stability in support of delivering a world-class customer experience
• Partner with service and platform owners to develop headroom and live buffer policies, optimize hardware BoMs, leverage virtualized orchestration, and reduce product cost

Cross-functional Organizational Alignment

• Work in lockstep with Operations and Finance peers to align capacity plans and hardware requirements with capital budgets, cost targets, and financial outcomes
• Support strategic optimization initiatives across infrastructure investments, engineering development, and operations processes, contributing to long-term infrastructure strategy and capital planning
• Lead efforts to evaluate, procure, and provision requests for new or additional hardware, working with Systems and Network Engineering, SRE, NOC, and Data Center Operations teams to identify and deliver optimal solutions
• Maintain alignment with Product and Sales to support customer onboarding, growth, and demand variability
• Communicate complex capacity and infrastructure insights clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Data Science, Information Systems, Statistics or a related, technical field (or equivalent experience).
• 3-6+ years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering, Infrastructure Capacity Planning, Systems/Infrastructure Engineering, Production Engineering, Data Center Operations or similar Cloud Operations role
• Familiarity and experience working with Cloud Storage infrastructure, particularly highly-available, large-scale distributed systems supporting large amounts of data with high throughput and complex performance requirements
• Background in capacity modeling, performance analysis, scenario modeling, and/or infrastructure cost optimization, with an ability to quantify ideas within financial frameworks and forecasts.
• Proficiency in database and data analysis tools (preferably Snowflake, Metabase, Grafana, Python, SQL, Prometheus, Victoria Metrics, and Excel/Google Sheets)
• Demonstrated deep, creative, and logical thinking complimented by a strong data analysis skillset
• Excellent communication and documentation skills, with the ability to share knowledge and explain concepts accurately and concisely
• Desire to work on a highly-autonomous team that cares deeply about quality, cost, and the customer experience

Backblaze Perks: 

• Healthcare for family, including dental and vision
• Competitive compensation and 401K  
• RSU grants for full-time employees 
• ESPP program  
• Flexible vacation policy 
• Maternity & paternity leave 
• MacBook Pro to use for work, plus a generous stipend to personalize your  workstation 
• Childcare bonus (human children only) 
• Fertility treatment and support 
• Learning & development program 
• Commuter benefits 
• Culture that supports a healthy work-life balance 

At this point, we hope you're feeling excited about the job description you're reading. Even if you don't meet every requirement, we still encourage you to apply. Learning, developing, and growing are key parts of our culture. We're eager to meet people who believe in our mission and can contribute to our team in various ways. We want people to feel comfortable expressing their true selves and to come, stay, and do their best work here.

To provide greater transparency to candidates, we share base pay ranges for all US-based job postings regardless of state. We set standard base pay ranges for all roles based on function, level, and country location, benchmarked against similar-stage growth companies. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate location, skills, depth of work experience, and relevant licenses/credentials, and may vary from the amounts listed below.

The expected salary range for this role is $123,000 - $175,000.

At Backblaze, we value being fair and good to our customers, partners, and employees. That’s why diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the core of our values. We are committed to fostering a workforce where all employees feel a sense of belonging regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, socio-economic status, ability, veteran status, and education. We believe that our dedication to cultivating a diverse workspace not only allows us to better serve our customers in over 175 countries but further reinforces our commitment to doing the right thing. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer.

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