Senior Systems Engineer - Performance
Jito Labs is architecting the future of high-performance distributed systems on Solana. We're the team behind Jito-Solana, the leading MEV Solana client, and the Jito Block Engine, which has revolutionized block building on Solana. The Block-Engine has generated roughly 4.5 million SOL for validators and stakers over the past year. Our latest product, BAM, reimagines Solana market structure and the transaction supply chain with a heavy emphasis on performance, reliability, and transaction privacy. We're looking for a senior systems engineer with strong Linux systems and low-level performance experience who enjoys working at the boundary between software, operating systems, and hardware. Why Jito We're a small, profitable company with product-market fit. That means: High ownership: You drive significant technical decisions and shape product direction Fast execution: We ship rapidly and iterate on real-world feedback Technical excellence: Complex problems, elegant solutions Sustainable: Strong financials let us focus on long-term impact, not runway About the Position We are seeking an exceptional Senior Systems Engineer to join our core team building critical, next-generation infrastructure for the Solana ecosystem. You'll be exploring uncharted technical territory and building novel solutions across our stack: Systems & Infrastructure Engineering • Build and operate high-performance Linux systems for transaction processing and block building • Work with virtualization and isolation technologies (KVM, QEMU, TEEs) • Debug and optimize interactions between user-space systems and the Linux kernel • Reason about CPU performance, memory, I/O, and scheduling under real-world load Performance Engineering • Build high-performance systems for processing and analyzing on-chain data • Optimize critical paths in our infrastructure and Solana core (Agave & Firedancer) to reduce latency and increase throughput • Develop new tools for monitoring and improving network efficiency • Improve system reliability through careful design, observability, and fault isolation • Contribute performance improvements upstream (Solana / OS / QEMU related components) Requirements • 5+ years of systems-level programming in C, C++, or Rust (we use Rust) • Deep experience with Linux systems engineering and performance-critical infrastructure • Proficiency with profiling and tracing tools: perf, flamegraphs, eBPF • Experience debugging network performance (tcpdump, Wireshark, packet capture analysis) • Familiarity with CPU microarchitecture concerns (cache behavior, branch prediction, NUMA) • Willingness to dive into complicated systems to accurately root cause and fix issues • Clear, simple communication Strong Plus • HFT, market-making, or ultra-low-latency trading systems experience • Virtualization / hypervisors / TEE development • Kernel-adjacent or embedded systems work • Solana or blockchain infrastructure experience $200,000 - $230,000 a year -Salary based on experience -Above market compensation and multiple forms of equity -100% employer paid health benefits -All-expenses-paid team retreats and conferences -Weekly meal voucher Apply tot his job