May 07, 2024

Full time Engineering Research

R&D Engineer

About the hiring company

We are a seed-stage, stealth-mode rocket ship on a mission to accelerate adoption of zero-knowledge proofs. While the demand to generate proofs is exploding, the web3 ecosystem lacks a scalable infrastructure to generate proofs. We are building a cost-efficient and performant marketplace for proof generation, where the supply is a distributed network of GPUs, FPGAs and ASICs around the world.

Our company is led and founded by a renowned cryptographer, Dr. Vanishree Rao (Twitter/X, LinkedIn), who led cryptography for the Mina Protocol and a suite of projects at IOHK. She has obtained her PhD in cryptography with Prof. Amit Sahai at UCLA, where she published multiple papers on zero-knowledge proofs and many other cryptography topics at Tier 1 conferences.

Job Description

We are seeking an experienced R&D Engineer to join our team that operates in an environment of shared accountability and without hierarchy. In this role, you will be responsible for designing and continually improving upon the protocol’s architecture. You will write internal and external-facing documentation that assimilates concepts from relevant projects and research papers. As an early team member, you will help shape not only the protocol, but also who we are as a company. You will set a technical standard and eventually become one of our core contributors. You will have the freedom and autonomy to shape the direction of our culture and platform, contributing your ideas and expertise to drive its evolution. You will be challenged with complex problem-solving in a rapidly evolving problem space.

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborate with small team to architect a distributed systems protocol

• Research and compare potential tech stacks the protocol could be based on

• Research on relevant protocols to inspire our architecture

• Collaborate with the team in developing the protocol

• Create high-quality external- and internal-facing documentations

What You Need To Succeed

• Experience working on mechanism designs; for example, DeFi and auction protocols

• Knowledge of common Web3 tech stacks

• High-quality documentation skills

• Experience in working on greenfield projects

• Thrives in and nurtures a culture of excellence and delivery

• Experience in R&D and/or academic background in computer science

• Grit necessary to function at fast-paced start-up

Nice-To-Haves

• Ability to code in Rust and Solidity

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity

• Take-what-you-need vacation

• Opportunity to work with a driven, talented, dedicated team that values collaboration, innovation, and making a strong positive impact

• Culture built upon mutual respect, empathy, excellence and delivery