Blockchain Engineer

At Bolt Labs, our mission is to empower everyone with the tools they need to realize financial privacy. To achieve this, we’re building zkChannels: a scalable and usable privacy-preserving payment infrastructure that integrates with existing payment networks, including but not limited to public blockchains. We believe zkChannels will set a new standard for secure payments in online services, giving merchants a seamless way to comply with emerging privacy regulations and moreover, delight their customers with cryptographically rigorous respect for their privacy.

You can learn more about our work on zkChannels here.

Why work at Bolt Labs?

• Values: We care about building technology that makes a positive difference for the privacy of people everywhere. Our goal is to create an inclusive and supportive work environment, where we all have the resources to learn, grow, and work collaboratively to improve the state of privacy today.
• Mentorship: We believe in investing in your growth as an engineer, no matter your level of experience when you join us. You will be collaborating closely with several members of our small team to define and lead new initiatives. You’ll also get to share your knowledge and expertise with others on the team!
• Open source: You’ll have an opportunity to contribute significantly to the open-source ecosystem, from which we both substantially benefit and to which we give back.
• Flexibility: We are a small, fully remote, focused team, offering maximum flexibility and minimum bureaucracy. If you’re able to attend meetings, collaborate effectively, and do your work, when and where you work are up to you. Want to take a walk in the middle of the day? Want to turn your phone off after work and not respond to messages until after breakfast? We encourage you to value your life’s balance.
• Research: You will be working to solve meaningful, never-before-solved challenges with a world-class team of scientists and engineers in the fields of applied cryptography, distributed systems, programming languages, and more… and we’re excited to learn from the unique insights that you will bring.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary Range: $150,000 – $160,000 USD
• Benefits: Fully subsidized health, dental, and vision insurance for you (and 50% subsidized for your partner and family), equity in the company, a funded bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy, and 4 weeks of paid vacation time per year, not including sick days and holidays.

You might be a great fit for the role of Blockchain Engineer if…

You have broad knowledge of the cryptocurrency landscape and related cryptographic technologies

At Bolt, you will act as the primary liaison between our organization and the cryptocurrency community. This role will involve making well-informed, research-based recommendations about our product direction and the cryptocurrencies we will support. You will educate software engineers, cryptographers, and key stakeholders on how smart contracts and blockchains work and interoperate.

You may be an active contributor within open-source blockchain communities, and you are comfortable doing independent research on smart contract frameworks, implementation techniques, and related security considerations (including an interest in applications of privacy-preserving technologies like zero knowledge proofs and multi-party computation). Ideally, you have expertise in at least one area of computer science.

You have deep experience with smart contract development on at least one public blockchain

At Bolt, you will be leading the design, implementation, and deployment of smart contracts and help develop best practices and processes to ensure those smart contracts are secure. You currently have a deep understanding of at least one public blockchain, and you are excited by the opportunity to gain expertise in multiple blockchain technologies. (You may even have prior experience in deploying smart contracts to a public blockchain like Ethereum, but this is not a requirement!)

You have experience contributing to multiple software development projects

You will be collaborating with a team of Rust engineers, cryptographers, and internal and external stakeholders on multiple ongoing projects and initiatives. Your work will include collecting requirements from stakeholders, assessing appropriate tools and dependencies, and interacting with a number of open source communities. This work will benefit from your experience in identifying and implementing software development best practices and standards with respect to security, testing, documentation, and so on.

You’re confident balancing independent and collaborative learning

Bridging cutting-edge cryptography research and high-quality software development is difficult interdisciplinary work. We’re seeking someone who’s not afraid to ask a lot of questions: you should know how to notice when you’re confused and say so when you are. At the same time, you should have the drive and the organizational skills to take charge of your own learning. We’ll work together to help you strike a healthy balance between collaboration and independence.

You have strong skills for asynchronous communication and remote work

Work at Bolt Labs has always been asynchronous and fully remote, and will continue to be so after the COVID-19 pandemic’s travel restrictions are over. We’re looking for an empathetic person who doesn’t mind collaborating asynchronously, with the excellent verbal and written communication skills necessary to thrive in that environment. After it is safe to travel, we plan to bring the team together in person approximately once per quarter (but we won’t be doing that until it really is safe).

You have any of many different professional or academic background

Please consider applying even if you don’t have all of the following:

• a college degree in computer science or engineering,
• X years of experience working with blockchain technologies, or
• Y years of professional experience as a software engineer.

You have current work authorization in the United States

For this role, we are looking for someone with current authorization to work in the United States.

How to apply

Submit an application here!

We will request the following information:

• your name and pronouns,
• your resume or CV (no page limit),
• a brief cover letter describing your interest in the role, and
• a sample or description of your technical work. Your work sample can be one or more public links to smart contracts you’ve worked on and/or projects you’ve maintained. If your best work has happened behind closed doors, it can be a description of the work you did in enough detail for us to understand it.

What to expect in the interview process

1. Initial interview: We’ll chat with you about your background, prior experience with blockchains, motivation for working at Bolt Labs, and other introductory things. We’ll also ask you to tell us more about the work sample(s) or description(s) you submitted with your application. There won’t be any surprise pop-quizzes during this interview; this is about getting to know you on your terms.
2. Zero-whiteboard technical interview: In this technical interview, we’ll have an open-ended discussion about a few near-term and long-term projects. We’ll share our research and product goals and challenges that we’re facing. We’ll review our current smart contracts with you and ask how you would tackle similar or related use cases. Depending on your prior experience and expertise, we may also ask how you would perform optimizations or conduct an audit. We’re also excited to hear (and answer) your questions about our work, technical directions, and overall vision. You may prepare for this interview by reading through our documentation, source code, or other materials. We don’t expect you to spend more than a few hours preparing, just enough to have a meaningful conversation and show us your insights.
3. Final team interview: After the technical interview, we’ll let you know whether we’re interested in moving forward to a final interview where you’ll get an opportunity to talk to the entire team at Bolt. You’ll be able to ask any questions you still have about our culture, our future plans, our upcoming technical challenges, and whatever else comes to your mind.
4. Offer: After the final interview, we’ll let you know whether we’re interested in extending an offer. If we extend an offer, our team members will continue to be available for you to ask anyone any questions that might have come up for you since the last interview.

We recognize that the interview process is also an opportunity for you to evaluate us as an organization. At any point in this process, we may realize that we’re not a great fit for each other. If it’s the case on our end, we’ll try to let you know as soon as possible.

All of our interviews will be conducted over video chat.

We want you to be comfortably able to show yourself off in the best possible light. If there are any accommodations we can make during the interview process to make things easier for you, please let us know. At any point, please feel free to email any questions to [email protected].

We look forward to meeting you!

Bolt Labs is an equal opportunity employer and we value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.