Protocol Engineer

About Company

Startup venture backed by leading funds in distributed systems engineering, with deep experience in cryptography and game theory applied in novel contexts.

The Role

As a Core Engineer at Solforge, you will spearhead our engineering efforts, driving the innovation and implementation of next generation high performant distributed systems. You will be working with a highly proficient team of core engineers whom have all contributed to foundational and novel network components.

We believe in hiring only exceptional individuals whom are highly motivated to work on complex core infrastructure challenges, motivated with a coherent system design philosophy, that will drive our industry forward. Expect frequent group discussions on architecture, new design spec and code reviews. We are all deeply committed by shipping quality code frequently.

About the Team

As a team, we are currently building an entire platform written in Rust which brings the L1 and L2s together, that allows us to create deeply complex scenarios and interactions with the running network. While your main focus for this role is Rust and complex interactions with different components, you will most likely also be involved in infrastructure (e.g. k8s) and writing scripts and supporting projects in other languages (e.g. Go). We believe that working at every level of the stack is necessary to understand the big picture and how all the things are wired together.

Responsibilities

• Highly motivated to contribute to our mission and be part of something bigger. Excited to work on projects that are ground-breaking and complex
• Refactor, improve and lead software design implementation
• Communicate effectively with the team and document your code. It is also expecting that founding engineers mentor less experienced engineers.
• Read and understand a protocol specification and be able to break it into issues and turn it into Rust code.
• Maintaining a large codebase with many components and keeping it well-designed, future-proofed, modular and highly performant
• Automate security testing processes and benchmarks, creating innovative tools and frameworks for continuously improving our systems.

What You’ll Bring:

• A bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, coupled with practical experience in blockchain systems.
• At least three years of experience in distributed systems, with a deep technical understanding of L1 and L2 architectural architectures.
• Strong proficiency in one out of the following programming languages, such as Rust, C, C++ and Go — strongly emphasising writing performant and secure code.
• Demonstrated experience in designing, developing, and deploying scalable distributed systems.
• An analytical mindset with the ability to anticipate and mitigate emerging security threats, leveraging a comprehensive understanding of the blockchain landscape.

Preferred Qualifications

• Active open-source contributions in core protocol engineering (such as Firedancer, Reth, Lighthouse, Geth, …).
• Direct involvement in the Solana ecosystem, with contributions to Solana’s runtime, scheduler, or other core systems.
• Active engagement with the blockchain security research community, evidenced by contributions to open-source projects, publications, or presentations at notable conferences.

Benefits

• Competitive remuneration packages based on iterative market research including tokens
• Remote-first and self-initiating with flexible hours
• Work with team players who are genuinely excited about their impact and projects
• A dynamic and collaborative work environment that fosters innovation and recognises individual contributions to collective success
• Opportunities for professional growth and advancement within a rapidly growing technological frontier