Engineering Lead - Filecoin Saturn

About Protocol Labs

Protocol Labs drives breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward. Protocol Labs is a product-development lab, but behind the protocols and tools we build, behind the research and implementations, are passionate people, teammates, and community members. Most teams in the Protocol Labs Network are fully distributed and work remotely around the world. Engineers, researchers, and operators work in the open to improve the internet — humanity's most important technology — as we explore new advances at the intersection of many exciting fields (crypto, networks, distributed systems) and cultures (startups, research, open source, distributed work).

Enthusiasm about the decentralized web and blockchains has brought an influx of people who want to use distributed systems but who don't know how to build the necessary infrastructure. We are building that infrastructure. To continue that work, we're looking for people who thoroughly understand the principles of distributed systems and cryptography, and who will lean into the challenges of applying those principles in open-source code that will be deployed worldwide.

Filecoin

Filecoin, a decentralized storage network to store humanity's most valuable information, is one of the most promising projects of Web3. In the two years since its launch, over 18 exabytes of storage have been pledged to the Filecoin network, which is proven and verified by node operators every single day. As we look forward, many challenges remain to be solved such as continuing to scale the network, allowing user programmability through the addition of a Virtual Machine, and implementing cutting-edge ideas coming from the latest in cryptographic research.

Filecoin Saturn

One such challenge is the reliable, performant, and economic retrieval of content on the Internet, including Filecoin. Filecoin Saturn is a decentralized content delivery network (CDN) for Filecoin. We seek an engineering lead to join the growing Filecoin Saturn team.

For this role, we particularly value experience designing, building, scaling, and running complex production software systems that have external customers/users and the execution focus and discipline to productionize these systems to meet business needs. Experience building large-scale production distributed systems (especially with an eye towards networking, performance, storage, and/or reliability), other blockchain-like networks, and work on low-latency engineering projects will also be highly regarded.

As the Engineering Lead for Filecoin Saturn, you will...

• Design, scale, run, and deliver production software at scale used by millions of people around the world
• Lead cross-functional team efforts including engineering, design, community, product, and business to accomplish engineering and business goals
• Lead engineering and technical efforts for Filecoin Saturn, Filecoin’s Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• Be responsible for Saturn’s technical architecture and design
• Manage other engineers
• Design and implement performant and resilient distributed systems
• Interface with other technical teams both inside and outside of Protocol Labs
• Solve hard problems in low-trust distributed systems

You may be a fit for this role if you have....

• Designed, built, and scaled global production software services
• Lead engineering with discipline and knowledge of the bigger picture to accomplish business goals
• A strong technical design ability informed by broad experience across multiple domains/specialties
• A solid understanding of distributed systems principles and applications
• Significant experience building applications using Javascript and Python, Go, or Rust
• Experience designing and building distributed and/or peer-to-peer software systems and applications
• Literacy with cryptographic principles and practices
• Proven track record of independently driving projects in a fast-paced environment
• Excellent communication skills on both technical and non-technical issues
• A keen awareness of teamwork, process, and patterns of successful collaboration and teamwork
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, especially in an asynchronous work environment

Bonus Points

• Security engineering and/or cryptography principles and practices
• Experience building with decentralized building blocks such as DHTs, consensus protocols, smart contracts, blockchain, p2p networking, etc.
• Experience building a CDN
• Experience with open source

What’s it like to work at Protocol Labs?

Protocol Labs mission is to improve humanity’s most important technology, the Internet. We build protocols, systems, and tools to improve how it works. Today, we are focused on how we store, locate, and move information. Our projects include IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and more.

As a distributed team, we hire anywhere in the world, and at various levels of experience (entry, senior, staff). We look for people with unique perspectives and diverse backgrounds.

We have a great benefits package, including parental leave, contributions to your retirement, competitive pay, and unlimited time off. For U.S.-based employees, we also provide platinum-level health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your family.

Engineering at Protocol Labs

With IPFS, libp2p, Filecoin and other related projects we are laying the foundation for a more resilient, more secure, distributed version of the web. This requires rigorous engineering from protocol design through all the phases of implementation. We strike a balance between pragmatism (put it on a ship ⛴), deeply informed protocol design, and strict application of strong engineering principles. All of this happens in an environment defined by curiosity, passion, and a love for open source.