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 a very senior engineering lead to join the growing Filecoin Saturn team.

For this role, we are seeking expertise leading the design & architecture of internet-scale, geo-redundant, fault tolerant software services that process billions of transactions per second. While we value CDN expertise, we are happy to consider senior leaders with 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...

• Lead the architectural design, development and deployment of Saturn’s next generation CDN to realize the full potential of IPFS’s edge caching performance properties
• Work cross functionally across engineering, ecosystem, marketing and legal to achieve business objectives
• Function as technical lead, working with the existing team to deliver outstanding technical results
• Solve hard problems in low-trust distributed systems
• Be responsible for Saturn’s technical performance, improving key metics such as time to first byte, average MS latency and uptime
• Uplevel and guide engineers on your team and across Protocol Labs
• Interface with other technical teams both inside and outside of Protocol Labs

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

• Lead the design and development of massively distributed internet scale services. While CDN experience is highly relevant, we particularly value experience working on state of the art distributed systems at scale.
• A keen awareness of teamwork, process, and patterns of successful collaboration and teamwork
• A strong technical design acumen informed by broad experience across multiple domains/specialties
• Literacy with cryptographic principles and practices
• Excellent communication skills on both technical and non-technical issues
• A solid understanding of distributed systems principles and applications
• Proven track record of independently driving projects in a fast-paced environment
• Mastery in large-scale modern software development practices (we primarily use Go, Node.js, and Rust, but do not require any particular language experience)
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, especially in an asynchronous work environment

Bonus Points

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

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.

The base pay for this position currently ranges from $300,000 to $334,000, plus cryptocurrency, equity, and opportunities for upside through performance rewards in cryptocurrency and equity. The base pay is based on a number of factors and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, experience, skills, abilities, training, and education. We also have a great benefits package, including parental and other forms of leave, contributions to your retirement, and unlimited time off. For U.S.-based employees, we also provide competitive 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.

If you’re passionate about the future of computing and a more democratized internet, we want to talk to you. Please reach out to Ansgar at [email protected] and say hi!

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