Rust Jobs for Rustaceans

About the Role
This is a full-time position for a Software Engineer. You will play a pivotal role in creating and implementing blockchain protocols.

About Common Prefix
Common Prefix is a blockchain research & development company. Blockchain technologies will empower a planetary-wide economic collaboration with efficient resource allocation in the near future, tracking capital, land, stock, government decisions, business, and governmental contracts. In the path towards this mainstream adoption of a "world wide ledger", our mission is to solve the foundational scientific and engineering challenges that stand in the way, in particular in the areas of interoperability, scalability, and usability.

We are idealistic cryptographers who prove protocols secure using mathematics, and pragmatic engineers who implement protocols and take them to production; and we culminate the synergy between the two. We're a small team of 24 people, half scientists, half engineers, working with blockchain-first companies only, from L1 to L2 and DeFi protocols, among others Axelar, Espresso Systems, Mysten Labs, Celestia, Babylon, and Flashbots, and via multiple research grants from the Ethereum Foundation. Beyond consulting, our engineering team is building core and foundational open source libraries and tooling to power the blockchain systems of tomorrow for the betterment of the community, focusing on Ethereum, Cosmos, and Bitcoin; and our research team is openly publishing papers in A* peer-reviewed scientific conferences and journals on all the foundational topics in the space, with the goal of getting performant protocols proven secure, cited, appreciated, implemented, and deployed.

You can learn more about our company on our website.
This is an ideal position if you want to switch gears into the area of blockchain technologies, as prior blockchain experience is not required and you can learn it with us. If you don’t already know these technologies, you will learn to develop on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cosmos, and Axelar, among others.

We employ some of the top scientists and engineers in the field, with whom you will have the opportunity to work hand-in-hand and learn from. As academics, we often hold internal lectures, courses, one-on-one mentoring sessions, and paper presentations to ensure the personal growth of everyone in the company and remain at the forefront of research in our field. You will also have to opportunity to make significant scientific contributions and publish in reputable conferences or journals, should you choose to do so, even if you don’t have a prior research record.

The vast majority of our work is open source, whether it is developed internally or for clients. You will have the opportunity to enrich your GitHub portfolio by contributing to some of the most pioneering open source tooling in the industry that we are developing and which is used by a broad range of projects.

Key Responsibilities:
In this role, you will split your time between the following responsibilities as needed:

• End-to-end implementation of blockchain software
  • Develop code in a variety of programming languages including Rust, Go, JavaScript, TypeScript, Solidity, and Python
  • Write unit, end-to-end, and integration tests, ensuring the reliability of financial systems
  • Identify and fix bugs and security issues on your own and others’ software
  • Conduct code reviews for your colleagues within and outside the team
  • Work with auditors in ensuring the correctness of mission-critical software
• Software lifecycle management and DevOps
  • Design and architecture software prototypes to demo to clients in early phases
  • Turn prototypes into production-grade software
  • Manage the deployment of your software into testnets and mainnets
  • Ensure the system remains live and safe as it is handling millions of dollars in total value locked
  • Ensure the correctness of mission-critical software by writing monitoring tools, diversifying infrastructure, and removing single points of failure (e.g., humans)
• Scientific communication
  • Regularly discuss with the scientific team to understand the security requirements of protocols
  • Learn from the scientific team on a regular basis by attending lectures, courses, or reading relevant academic papers
  • Keep the scientific team informed by teaching them about the engineering details so that they can stay abreast with the development process
  • Remain available for consulting the scientific team when they have engineering-specific questions for other projects
• Product and software communication
  • Communicate with project stakeholders to align on business requirements
  • If you choose to do so, be the face of the company when communicating with clients on relevant calls when it comes to technical details, with support from the business and the science teams
  • Write blogs and tweets in collaboration with the marketing team to showcase our achievements as a company in a public manner
  • Regularly communicate with the rest of your team and your project lead to understand changing requirements
  • Remain available for client consulting on calls on an as-needed basis in coordination with the rest of your project team to provide expertise in blockchain technology
• After sufficient onboarding, occasionally take a leadership role and take ownership of projects to ensure the timely delivery to clients, if you prefer
• Miscellaneous software engineering
  • Develop internal software for the company as needed to support our consulting business (financial tools, client management, availability management, client dashboards)
  • Develop open-source software for the blockchain community

Requirements:
The requirements for this position are:

• 5+ years software engineering experience
• Experience in designing large-scale software spanning hundreds of thousands of lines of code
• Experience in network programming (sockets, APIs)
  The following skills are appreciated but not required:
• Some proven track record in blockchain technology, such as the deployment of Solidity smart contracts on Ethereum, CosmWasm on Cosmos, Bitcoin Scripts on Bitcoin, or other blockchains
• A good overview of blockchain technologies and their market, including Layer 2s, rollups, light clients, bridges, and DeFi
• A degree in Computer Science (BSc, MSc/MEng, or PhD)
• An understanding of the theory of cryptography and consensus and their formal proofs of security
• A strong open-source contribution history
• Professional experience in multiple of these technologies: Rust, Go, JavaScript, TypeScript, Solidity, Python
• Network programming experience in a peer-to-peer context, such as libp2p/ragep2p
• Experience in web2 technologies, such as HTTP

What we offer

• A total compensation estimated in the range of $80,000 – $160,000 per year before tax (depending on level, but not on location)
• Unlimited vacations (usual is 30 days per year if public holidays are included), with appropriate prior planning
• The ability to work remotely as much as you prefer
• The ability to work locally from our offices in Athens, Greece, if you prefer
• The ability to optionally travel for work in exciting locations 2-3 times per year
• The opportunity to work and learn from world-class scientists from major universities in the field of blockchains, cryptography, and consensus
• The opportunity to work with other engineers, learn from them, and teach them best practices and technologies
• The chance to work with a diverse clientele, with many innovative projects, to learn the ins-and-outs of the blockchain market as it develops, and to remain on the bleeding edge of the latest developments in our field
• The chance to develop public and open source software to put on your GitHub for your track record
• The learning of transferable knowledge with widely used open source technologies
• The opportunity to work, learn with, and have a high impact on a fast-growing blockchain company 🧑🏼‍🔬

Applying
Please send your CV, GitHub, and transcript (if applicable) to careers@commonprefix.com, indicating the position title on the email subject.