Compensation

Competitive

Contract type

Full time

Remote working

Technologies & frameworks

Rust
Distributed Systems
Go
consensus

Benefits & perks

Remote working
Flexible working
Team workouts
Conference tickets
Unlimited vacation
Travel opportunities

Blockchains do not scale to a global user-base of seven billion people.

Role overview

About Heliax

The primary project of Heliax is the Anoma protocol (implemented in Rust). Anoma is a sovereign, proof-of-stake blockchain protocol that enables private, asset-agnostic cash and private bartering among any number of parties. In addition to Anoma, Heliax works on open-source projects which are part of the Anoma ecosystem, including but not limited to research in cryptographic libraries such as the MASP or Ferveo (written in Rust), and tools for high assurance validity predicates and arbitrary zero-knowledge circuits (Juvix, written in Haskell).

Heliax is a remote-first team, currently composed of cross-disciplinary members located around the world. All of our work is open-source. Our work culture is characterized by open-allocation, where team members have a high degree of freedom and autonomy in choosing when to work, what to work on, and whom to work with.

Overview

Distributed systems research engineering at Heliax focuses on designing, building, extending, and maintaining decentralized, permissionless, and censorship-resistant protocols. We are looking for experienced distributed systems engineers that are interested in applying novel research to create high-quality open-source technology and solve outstanding problems in the blockchain space.

As a member of the core protocol engineering team, you will be working on distributed ledger technology implemented in Rust and Go, with a particular focus on distributed systems: consensus algorithms and peer-to-peer networking layers. You’ll work both on the research and implementation side to ensure that our protocols are both theoretically sound and correctly realized in code. This role offers the chance to work closely on compelling cross-disciplinary problems in computer science, systems engineering, cryptography, and economics, and enjoy a high degree of independence in working conditions and prioritization.

Responsibilities

Produce technical specifications of BFT consensus algorithms and peer-to-peer systems in coordination with other team members
Analyze consensus protocols for safety, liveness, incentive compatibility under a rational actor model, asymptotic and concrete efficiency, and implementation difficulty
Implement protocols in performant and cleanly abstracted Rust and/or Go code
Comprehensively document and test protocols and protocol changes
Benchmark implementations and adjust both high-level architecture and low-level details in order to optimise for performance while retaining semantic correctness
Conduct code reviews in coordination with other team members and help maintain a high standard of quality across the codebase

Example Project

Heterogeneous Paxos and Multi-Chain Atomic Commits

Qualifications

Prior experience with distributed systems such as BFT consensus algorithms
Familiarity with the Rust and/or Go programming languages
Self-motivated & self-organized
Interested in open-source technology and research applied to DLT

Bonus Qualifications

Prior experience with large scale distributed systems deployed in practice
Prior experience with network and systems engineering
Prior experience with database design and optimization
Prior experience in blockchain technology
Prior experience implementing cryptography

Misc

Remote or local (Zürich/Zug, Berlin). When remote, preferred if mostly located within (+/- 7 hours) Central European time zones. Ideally someone who enjoys nature and hiking 🏔️.

Heliax

10-49

Heliax is a public goods lab which researches, develops, deploys, and maintains protocols and mechanisms designed to serve the everyday needs of humanity. Using these protocols and mechanisms, we build vertically integrated products and networks that form coherent open systems which are capable of acting as an alternative to existing exploitative paradigms. Everything produced by Heliax is open-source and unencumbered by any form of IP law. Two of the most notable vertically integrated protocols are Anoma and Namada. Anoma is an intent-centric, privacy-preserving protocol for decentralized counterparty discovery, distributed solving,and atomic multi-chain settlement – a radically novel architecture for decentralized protocols marking the beginning of the third generation of architectures, the first new generation since the introduction of programmable settlement by Ethereum. Namada is Anoma’s first fractal instance: a proof-of-stake Layer 1 blockchain protocol designed to provide users with asset-agnostic, interchain privacy. The key innovations include Zcash-like shielded transfers for any assets (fungible and non-fungible), incentivised privacy sets, and interoperability with Ethereum via a custom bridge and with the Cosmos ecosystem and others via IBC. As components of these vertically integrated protocols, Heliax builds many modular components which can be used independently or jointly, such as the Juvix language, Typhon consensus suite, Taiga private state transition framework, and VampIR polynomial circuit compiler. Heliax is a remote-first (but not remotely-only) team, currently composed of +50 cross-disciplinary members located around the world.

Typed Functional Programming

Early Stage Venture

Blockchain