VP, Protocol Engineer (Validators)

About the role

This role focuses on designing, building, and maintaining highly available and secure infrastructure for blockchain participation and custody. The engineer will work on optimizing validator operations, implementing monitoring solutions, and ensuring the health and stability of blockchain systems. A key aspect of the position involves identifying opportunities for process improvement, automation, and tooling to enhance operational efficiency.

The successful candidate will collaborate with various teams to improve infrastructure, monitoring, and incident response. This involves continuous research into emerging web3 and blockchain trends to inform leadership and organizational strategy, as well as identifying new product opportunities. The role also requires debugging complex distributed blockchains and protocols to improve participation.

Success in this position means ensuring the continuous reliability and uptime of services through participation in on-call rotations and developing automation scripts for deployment, scaling, and recovery. The engineer will apply a forward-looking view to their domain, ensuring that the infrastructure remains robust and adaptable to the evolving digital asset landscape.

The salary for this position ranges from $68,000 to $112,000 USD.

Skills that matter here

• Python: This role requires scripting in Python to automate processes and streamline operations.
• Linux Systems: Working knowledge of Linux systems is essential for performance optimization and command-line tooling.
• GCP: Expertise in cloud platforms like GCP is necessary for managing and deploying infrastructure.
• Kubernetes: Experience with Kubernetes is relevant for managing containerized applications and infrastructure.
• Distributed Systems: The role involves debugging complex distributed blockchains and protocols, requiring a deep understanding of distributed systems.
• Validator Operations: The core of this role involves leading the deployment and optimization of validator infrastructure across blockchain networks.

Who this role suits

• You are an experienced engineer with a background in protocol, DevOps, or SRE roles.
• You possess strong problem-solving skills and can identify root causes of issues, seeing them through to resolution.
• You are proactive in researching and staying updated on emerging trends in the web3/blockchain space.
• You can effectively communicate complex technical information to both technical and non-technical audiences.

From the employer

What You’ll Do:

• Design, build, and maintain highly available, scalable, and secure infrastructure and systems related to our blockchain participation and custody offerings.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify and implement improvements in infrastructure, monitoring, system automation, and incident response.
• Identify & implement solutions for your domain where process, automation or tooling can significantly improve our ability to operate our infrastructure.
• Develop a present and forward looking view into what’s happening in each part of your domain and how it applies to the business. Establish and communicate views that inform leadership and organizational strategy.
• Continuously research and stay up-to-date with emerging trends in the web3/blockchain space.
• Identify, scope and build on new product opportunities that may bring value to the business.
• Debug complex distributed blockchains and protocols to improve our participation.
• Implement monitoring, observability tools and best practices to ensure the health, performance, and stability of our blockchain infrastructure.
• Participate in and make improvements to, domain specific on-call rotations to ensure the continued reliability and uptime of our services.
• Work through others, to develop and maintain automation scripts and tools to streamline deployment, scaling, and recovery processes.

What We’re Looking For:

You are an experienced Protocol, DevOps or SRE Engineer with;

• Prior software engineering or application development experience in modern programming language (.Net, Go, Rust, C/C++, etc.)
• Ability to script in a high-level scripting language like Python, Perl or bash coupled with an ability to identify human processes that can be scripted and automated.
• Demonstrated experience working with blockchain infrastructure or strong knowledge of the blockchain domain (proof-of-stake consensus, web3, rpc, etc)
• Deep familiarity with compute-infrastructure systems, tooling, observability, debugging strategies along with research aptitude and a desire to never repeat the same problem twice.
• Troubleshooting expertise of complex application flows which span multiple systems along with an ability to identify server, network, and application issues and apply measurable remediations.
• Working knowledge of Linux systems, system performance optimization and command line tooling.
• Expertise in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and virtualization technologies (VMWare, KVM, Docker or similar).
• Hands-on experience with monitoring and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, Datadog, LogDNA, etc.)
• Conceptual knowledge of security best practices, including encryption, access control, and network security (firewalls, traffic filtering).
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with an ability to distill information to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong problem solving skills and ability to identify problems, determine their root cause, and see them through to solution.

What We Offer:

• Competitive base salary and discretionary bonus
• Competitive paid time off
• Company-paid health and protective benefits for employees and their eligible dependents
• Free virtual coaching sessions through Headspace
• Free daily snacks in-office
• Opportunities to learn about the Crypto industry
• Smart, entrepreneurial, and fun colleagues

*Benefits may vary depending on location.