---
title: 'IT Operations Engineer at Blacksmith'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/it-operations-engineer-blacksmith-new-york-8v69s2ssnsy5'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-05'
---

# IT Operations Engineer at Blacksmith

- **Company:** Blacksmith
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Compensation:** $150k–$170k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-30
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/blacksmith/22731d9e-a4b7-4f46-afe1-6e0b553dfeec

## Job description

## About Blacksmith

- We started by building infrastructure to run CI workloads really fast. Our first product helps companies run GitHub Actions substantially faster and cheaper by owning and operating our own global fleet of bare-metal machines rather than renting generic cloud VMs.
- Today, we orchestrate tens of millions of Firecracker VMs each week, running CI for 10,000+ companies and tens of millions in ARR. We’ve grown 20x so far in 2026.
- We operate thousands of bare-metal machines across multiple regions, regularly schedule 300k+ vCPUs concurrently, and run a petabyte-scale Ceph cluster that we manage ourselves.
- We’ve raised $125M from Seed to Series C, led by Sequoia, Google Ventures (GV) & Peak XV Partners, and we’re intentionally building a small, but exceptional team.
- Blacksmith was founded by a team with deep systems and scaling experience, including building search/ads infrastructure at Faire, and operating large distributed systems at Cockroach Labs. Our GTM is led by Jon Boyer, formerly Head of Sales at Zapier.
- We're now extending the same CI infrastructure into a broader platform: running agent sandboxes at scale and building our own background coding agent on top of it.

## The role at Blacksmith

We're hiring our first IT Operations Engineer to own the systems and workflows our employees rely on. You'll shape how IT operates at Blacksmith, from onboarding and device management to identity, access and day-to-day support. This is a hands-on role with broad ownership. You'll solve problems for teammates, automate recurring work, and build processes that scale with the company. You'll also partner with security and engineering to keep our devices, accounts and internal tools secure.

## What you’ll be doing

- Own onboarding, role changes and offboarding end to end, including device procurement, setup and recovery, account provisioning and timely access removal.
- Resolve employee issues across hardware, software, networking and accounts, and turn recurring problems into reliable, self-service or automated workflows.
- Operate and improve identity and access management, ensuring employees have the access they need and nothing more.
- Manage our employee device fleet, including automated enrollment, patching, disk encryption and inventory.
- Own software administration, licenses and renewals, keeping track of the tools we use and who has access to them.
- Partner with business teams to build and maintain internal apps and integrations that simplify their work.
- Partner with security and engineering on endpoint security, access controls and audit readiness, and maintain clear employee guides and operational runbooks.

You’re a good fit if you have

- A resourceful approach to troubleshooting and the persistence to work through unfamiliar problems using documentation, investigation and vendor support.
- A genuine interest in helping people, with the patience and communication skills to support technical and non-technical teammates.
- A track record of proactively identifying problems and driving them through resolution without waiting for direction, addressing root causes while managing competing priorities.
- Hands-on experience administering Okta and Google Workspace, with a solid understanding of SSO, MFA, SCIM provisioning and least-privilege access.
- Experience managing a macOS fleet with Addigy or another MDM, such as Jamf or Kandji, including automated enrollment through Apple Business Manager.
- Working knowledge of networking fundamentals, including DNS, DHCP, Wi-Fi and VPN troubleshooting.
- Experience running employee onboarding, offboarding and IT support in a growing organization.
- The ability to automate repetitive work through scripting, APIs or workflow tools.
- Strong comfort using coding agents to develop and debug internal tools, integrations and automation, while reviewing changes and validating results.

Bonus

- You've built or scaled an IT function, or led migrations, tool rollouts or process redesigns in a growing organization.
- You've supported security or compliance work, such as SOC 2, endpoint security or incident response.
- You've managed identity or other IT systems through infrastructure as code.
- You've built internal applications or tools for business teams, translating their needs into practical, maintainable solutions.

## Compensation and benefits

- Medical, Vision, and Dental insurance.
- Competitive base + equity.
- 401K match.
- Unlimited PTO.
- Annual offsite.
- Early-exercise stock options.
- 12 weeks fully paid parental leave (US).

## About Blacksmith

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Blacksmith is a high-performance CI cloud platform that runs GitHub Actions on purpose-built hardware to accelerate build, test, and deployment workflows.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Startup, backed by Y Combinator and Google Ventures)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, CA, USA (with an office in New York City)
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Aditya Maru, Aditya "JP" Jayaprakash, and Aayush Shah

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Developer Infrastructure / CI/CD (Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery)
- **Target customers**: B2B, primarily software engineering teams of all sizes (from startups to enterprises) using GitHub Actions
- **Mission or purpose**: To be the compute layer for CI — making developers’ feedback loops as fast as possible by providing a drop-in replacement for GitHub-hosted runners that is faster, more observable, and more cost-efficient.

## Products & Services
- **Blacksmith CI Platform (SaaS)**: A cloud-based service that replaces standard GitHub Actions runners with bare-metal microVMs running on high-performance gaming CPUs. Key features include:
    - **2x faster hardware** (highest single-core performance)
    - **4x faster cache downloads** (co-located caching)
    - **40x faster Docker builds** (NVMe persistence)
    - **Advanced observability** (global log search, inline PR failure comments, job-level insights)
    - **Instant provisioning** and unlimited concurrency
    - Claimed to be 75% more cost-efficient than GitHub runners and a drop-in replacement (one-line YAML change)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding (undisclosed amount, but backed by Y Combinator and Google Ventures); also reports **50M+ jobs processed monthly** and **30,000+ happy developers** across **3,000+ organizations**
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator (backed), Google Ventures (backed), and angel investors including Kelsey Hightower (former Distinguished Engineer, Google), Spencer Kimball (CEO, Cockroach Labs), David Cramer (Co-founder, Sentry), Theo Browne (Founder, t3.gg), and Kelvin Beachum (NFL athlete, Arizona Cardinals)
- **Growth Signals**: Launched in 2024, grew to a team of 25, acquired 30,000+ users and 3,000+ customer organizations within the first year, and is actively hiring across engineering, sales, marketing, and operations roles in both San Francisco and New York City.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Purpose-built hardware**: Uses bare-metal gaming CPUs with the highest single-core performance available, specifically optimized for the CI workload, unlike generic cloud VMs from hyperscalers (AWS, GCP, Azure).
- **Co-located caching**: Cache artifacts are stored in the same data center where jobs run, dramatically reducing download times compared to solutions where cache is remote.
- **Cost efficiency**: Claims 75% lower cost than GitHub-hosted runners while providing significantly better performance.
- **Drop-in simplicity**: Integration is a single-line change in the GitHub Actions YAML file, with no credit card required to start.
- **Founding team pedigree**: Founders are University of Waterloo graduates and former engineers at Cockroach Labs and Faire (YC W17), bringing deep infrastructure and scaling expertise.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Scaling the platform to handle increasing job volume, expanding observability features, and building out the go-to-market team (active hiring for Sales, Marketing, and Customer-facing roles).
- **Future direction**: While starting with GitHub Actions, the company plans to expand to other CI platforms such as BuildKite, GitLab, and Jenkins, aiming to become the universal compute layer for CI — going after the $10B CI compute market currently dominated by hyperscalers.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Values-driven environment emphasizing “No passengers,” “Be contrarian,” “Take risks,” “Play hard,” “Show kindness,” and “Stay optimistic.” The team is described as lean (25 people), exceptionally talented, and multidisciplinary.
- **Remote/Hybrid Policy**: Hybrid model with offices in San Francisco and New York City. Roles are listed for specific locations, suggesting in-office presence is expected.
- **Notable Perks**:
    - Competitive salary and equity (with early exercise tax benefits)
    - 5% 401K match (100% on first 3%, 50% on next 2%)
    - Health, dental, and vision insurance
    - Paid family leave
    - Unlimited PTO
    - Birthday off + a Michelin star dinner for you and a +1
    - Team offsites and Michelin star team dinners
    - Choice of mechanical keyboard
    - Lunch on Fridays
- **Engineering Culture**: Small, high-agency team where engineers are expected to own large areas of the product. Strong emphasis on taking risks, moving fast, and building infrastructure from the ground up.

## Sources
1. [blacksmith.sh](https://www.blacksmith.sh/)
2. [blacksmith.sh/company](https://www.blacksmith.sh/company)
3. [blacksmith.sh/careers](https://www.blacksmith.sh/careers)
4. [Y Combinator](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/blacksmith)
5. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/blacksmithrun)
6. [Ashby Careers Page](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/blacksmith)

## Other roles at Blacksmith

- [Developer Marketer](https://feeny.ai/job/developer-marketer-blacksmith-san-francisco-ds98ysjb0ng3) — San Francisco, CA / New York, NY
- [Enterprise Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/enterprise-account-executive-blacksmith-san-francisco-xbc99ejvpj0c) — San Francisco, CA
- [Technical Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-recruiter-blacksmith-san-francisco-f18t6wc11j85) — San Francisco, CA
- [Systems Security Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/systems-security-engineer-blacksmith-new-york-7v60v6p40kp9) — New York, NY
- [Executive Assistant (to the CEO)](https://feeny.ai/job/executive-assistant-to-the-ceo-blacksmith-san-francisco-20e2pvt3189a) — San Francisco, CA
- [Office Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/office-manager-blacksmith-new-york-w9hxy3y3mhvr) — New York, NY
- [Account Executive, Digital Natives](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-digital-natives-blacksmith-san-francisco-yz3rxnr3s2vq) — San Francisco, CA / New York, NY
- [Brand Designer](https://feeny.ai/job/brand-designer-blacksmith-san-francisco-sr8gv055fqvp) — San Francisco, CA / New York, NY
- [Enterprise Product Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/enterprise-product-manager-blacksmith-new-york-0aa9egntz0xv) — New York, NY
- [GTM & Ops Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/gtm-ops-recruiter-blacksmith-san-francisco-jgevfamc9a62) — San Francisco, CA / New York, NY