Strategic Operations Engineer III

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. We’re seeking a Strategic Ops Engineer III  to join our team!

What You'll Do:

• Available to Lead and govern the end-to-end incident management lifecycle, including detection, triage, escalation, and resolution.
• Drive major incident management (MIM) processes and communications.
• Improve MTTR (Mean Time to Resolution) through automation and process optimization.
• Establish and maintain incident response playbooks and runbooks.

• Maintain and improve intelligent heatmaps leveraging AI/ML to identify recurring technical themes and prioritize long-term remediation.
• Implement trend analysis and proactive problem identification using observability data and AI.
• Track and manage problem records to closure. 

• Govern change management processes (lead the CAB), ensuring safe, compliant, and low-risk deployments.
• Define and enforce change policies, risk assessments, and approval workflows.
• Drive continuous improvement in release and deployment practices.

• Maintain a strong understanding of system architecture and monitoring strategies, identifying gaps and opportunities for improvement.
• Partner with engineering teams to improve system resilience and performance.
• Reduce alert fatigue by improving signal-to-noise ratio in monitoring systems.

• Leverage AI/ML for anomaly detection, predictive alerting, and automated root cause analysis.
• Implement AI-driven solutions to optimize incident response and operational workflows.
• Analyze large-scale operational data to identify patterns and recommend improvements.
• Experience with AIOps platforms or building AI-driven operational solutions.

Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience in IT Operations, SRE, or similar roles.
• Strong expertise in Incident, Problem, and Change Management (ITIL or similar frameworks).
• Proven experience in governing and optimizing operational processes.
• AI & Data Expertise: Strong knowledge of AI/ML concepts, including anomaly detection, predictive analytics, and data modeling.
• AIOps Experience: Hands-on experience with AIOps platforms or building AI-driven operational solutions (event correlation, alert prioritization).

Preferred Qualifications:

• ITIL certification (Foundation or higher).
• Proficiency with platforms such as Jira, SNOW, FireHydrant, Moogsoft, etc.
• Experience working in high-availability, large-scale environments.

Key Competencies:

• Positive Attitude!
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Process-oriented mindset with a focus on governance and continuous improvement.
• Excellent stakeholder communication and leadership skills.
• Ability to drive change across cross-functional teams.

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.

To understand more about the data we collect and process as part of your application, please view our Backblaze Employee Privacy Notice.