Thanks to our great customers, Backblaze continues to grow. We are excited to announce that we have hired a Director of Product Marketing. Let’s spend a few minutes with Andy…

Where are you from? And where are you now?
I was born in Brooklyn New York and grew up on Long Island in Shirley, exit 67 on the Long Island Expressway – way out there. I spent 10 years in the Air Force and moved to California when I got out.
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I’m excited to announce we have hired a Director of Web Services (a position which morphed just slightly from the original title of Sr. Systems Administrator.) Below is a short interview with the latest addition to the Backblaze family: Kirk.

Where are you originally from? Why did you move here?

I was born in Washington D.C. and lived in Maryland for my first 37 years. In 1987 I got an opportunity to come out here to work for one year and I could bring the family. We fell in love with this area then but after the one year we returned to Maryland. In 1997 we moved out here after I got sick of the weather and pollen every year. It was a big move for us and since I was the main driver for the move I had to answer all the complaints about why we moved, etc. Fun!

Favorite place you’ve traveled?

My wife and I love driving trips and we have spent several vacations on the road. We drove on what is left of route 66 from LA out to Texas taking every side road and that was an awesome trip. We also drove to Mount Rushmore, seeing that awesome site. I love to drive. It represents true freedom, and boy, what a great big country we have!

Where do you go to think?

Driving! I figure things out while driving.

What is your personal mantra?

“I feel happy, I feel healthy, I feel terrific” I know its weird but I went to this seminar once that said if you said this out loud 5 times in a row daily it would make you feel better. Son-of-a-gun it works!

Were you always interested in technology?

YES! I grew up in the age of the astronaut in the 60′s and when I was a little kid that’s all I wanted to be. The space program was everything to me. I used to rig up my bedroom and turn it into a space capsule with any gadget I could find. A transistor radio, and an old cassette recorder made up my command console. I would take a dining room chair and flip it on its back up against the bed so I could lay with my head on the floor and legs up on the bed with my technology besides me making a “capsule”. As I got older and began college my first job and where I stayed the next 18 years was working at Goddard Space Flight Center for a contractor to NASA. Being around all this customer hardware and computers that filled whole rooms was so cool. I learned to operate all the equipment for the LANDSAT ground system. I went on to support other missions in various positions even working on a space shuttle mission at the JPL in Pasadena.

Of what achievement are you most proud?

Work/technical achievement: I wrote a paper called the “System Test Risk Assessment Measure” which I presented at International Test Conferences and it won the Best paper in the computer Sciences category where I worked. It was the first and only paper on QA ever to win the award in the computer science category.

Personal – I have suffered from being overweight my entire life . finally at 325 pounds I began to look after myself and work out losing 60 pounds and I continue to workout 4 times a week.

Does it pain you when people lose data? Want to help promote an online backup service that has helped save a marriage, save Christmas, save a photographer’s portfolio, and even bring down an Argentinian counterfeiting crime ring?

Come be our Director of Product Marketing and lead customer acquisition programs! We need someone who is creative and willing to take risks (which will sometimes fail), but is analytical in structuring experiments and measuring success. Sound like you?

Title: Director of Product Marketing

Role: As the Director of Product Marketing, your role will include:
• Both developing product marketing strategies and executing them tactically.
• Focusing on profitable revenue growth, customer acquisition, and brand development.
• Developing PR opportunities and thought leadership content.
• Developing and executing social media campaigns.
• Determining and optimizing advertising placements.
• Pitching opportunities and presenting at conferences and other events.
• Crafting unique messaging and positioning for the online backup service.
• Building out case studies and other content for the Backblaze for Business offering.
• Empowering affiliate partners with enhanced content and tools
• …and generally coming up with creative, data driven ways to grow Backblaze.

Want to join our team?
• Email: with subject “Director of Product Marketing”
• Include your resume
• Include an answer to: “In the first month, what three things would you do to acquire customers; how would you measure success; and how many customers would you expect will result from this?”

Note: position is based in San Mateo, CA.

UPDATE: this position has been filled by Kirk!

Do you like Big Data? Big red boxes?

The Backblaze online backup service has nearly 20 petabytes of customer data stored and adds about a petabyte every month. We like people who have the creativity to come up with new ways of building bigger and cheaper cloud storage – yet are meticulous about the datacenter operations. Sound like you?

Title: Sr. Systems Administrator

Role: As the Sr. Systems Administrator, your role will be to:
• Help plan, organize, and manage all activities of the Backblaze data centers.
• Scale operations including deploying & configuring new systems & networks.
• Troubleshoot and resolves operational problems.
• Implements security measures required by corporate security policies.
• Help create, maintain and improve operational shell scripts and manual procedures.
• Install new software patches, releases and system upgrades.
• Perform system backups and recovery as needed.
• Maintain monitoring system to measure system availability and detect issues.
• Help hire and train IT staff as needed, including those in remote locations.
• Continuously increase operational efficiency.
• Continuously improve Backblaze Storage Pods.
• Participate in the pager rotation and respond to alerts as needed.
• Handle daily operational tasks including reading logs and replacing drives.

Want to join our team?
• Email: with subject “Sr. Systems Administrator”
• Include your resume
• Include an answer to the question: “How would you manage boot image and system configurations on 1,000+ storage servers (i.e. Backblaze Storage Pods)?”

Note: Position is in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We are growing quickly and are on a bit of a hiring binge. Last week we opened a customer support position that we have now filled, but are looking for yet another person to add to that team.

Additionally, we are now looking for a fantastic Java engineer.

You will work on the server side APIs that authenticate users when they log in, accept the backups, manage the data, and prepare restored data for customers. You will work with artists and designers to create new HTML web pages that customers use every day. And you will help build support tools to help chase down and diagnose customer issues.

Must be proficient in:
- Java
- JSP/HTML
- XML
- Apache Tomcat
- Struts
- UTF-8, Java Properties, and Localized HTML (Backblaze runs in 11 languages)
- APIs for PayFlow Pro/Paypal or other payment processor
- Large scale systems supporting thousands of servers and millions of customers
- Cross platform (Linux/Macintosh/Windows) – don’t need to be an expert on all three, but cannot be afraid of any

Looking for an attitude of:
- Passionate about building friendly, easy to use Interfaces and APIs.
- No platform bigotry – Linux good, Windows good, Macintosh good!
- Has to believe NoSQL is an Ok philosophy to build enormously scalable systems.
- Likes to work closely with other engineers, support, and sales to help customers.
- Believes the whole world needs backup, not just English speakers in the USA.
- Customer Focused (!!) – always focus on the customer’s point of view and how to solve their problem!

If this sounds like you – contact us on our jobs form.

Are you passionate about helping people? Communicate perfectly in email?
We may be looking for you! Backblaze needs a great support person to join our team.

We are looking for someone who will help users of our unlimited online backup with any questions they have.

Customer Support Representative
Experience in customer or technical-support is a plus, as is a desire to help protect data and the belief that online backup is a critical component of any backup strategy

Key skills:
* Understand Mac and Windows computers and their basic workings.
* Triage problems and clearly communicate solutions in email.
* Categorize common issues.
* Reproduce customer issues in a lab environment.
* Communicate clearly and concisely in email communications.

A few other details:
* This is a full-time position and includes healthcare.
* The position is based at our headquarters in San Mateo, CA.
* We are looking for someone to start ASAP.

Think this might be the perfect position for you? Or have someone you recommend?

Apply for the position by submitting a resume and sending some quick thoughts on how we could improve our support experience.