Protocol Labs Careers

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 (web3, cryptography, networks, distributed systems) and cultures (startups, research, open-source, distributed work).

About the Stewards Team

Our mission is to set direction/standards for projects, protocols, and architecture as well as cultivate a vibrant contributing community specifically for IPFS.  To achieve this we steward the protocols & implementations, work with project teams to integrate features, keep PL open source projects healthy, design and implement OSS processes, insist on the highest standards, spot and resolve conflicts between teams, features, etc.  (Read more of our public docs here.)

The Interplanetary File System (IPFS) is a foundational technology for Web 3.0, bringing content-addressed, peer-to-peer data into hundreds of applications serving millions of monthly users. We think the success of IPFS is just beginning - we see IPFS forming a new foundation for a distributed web of knowledge and computation for humans everywhere. We are growing our teams of contributors in Protocol Labs to help us realize the full potential of this technology.

We are looking for an engineering manager to take over responsibility for managing the team of full-time contributors to some of the most widely used IPFS implementation in “Kubo” and “Helia”. This person will manage and grow our team of engineers, as well as be the technical leader for the IPFS protocol, and a key figure in the overall IPFS ecosystem. We are looking for that combination of not only being a great people manager, but also having great technical depth and experience stewarding big open source projects.

As the Engineering Manager for Protocol Labs’ IPFS team, you will…

• Shepherd the development of various IPFS implementations like Kubo and Helia.
• Empower the IPFS community to develop additional IPFS implementations through mechanisms like public specs and regular implementer syncs.  This includes working closely with the engineers and engineering leaders of other IPFS implementations.
• Measure the performance of web3 protocols and propose improvements with ProbeLab.
• Partner with other leaders to maintain Protocol Labs’ strategy for investment in IPFS, and with the community to maintain and evolve strategy for IPFS overall.

As Engineering Manager at Protocol Labs, you will...

• Magnify the impact of multiple teams of software engineers and open source contributors in their implementation of complex, distributed systems and protocols
• Grow engineers’ skills, experience and confidence through regular 1:1s, coaching, actionable feedback, work and peer alignment, and career advocacy
• Lead, improve, and document processes for technical prioritization, planning, design, implementation and releases in harmony with and expanding open source community participation
• Communicate regularly with stakeholders and adjacent teams to build a shared understanding and accommodation of competing priorities
• Empower engineers to solve problems, fostering a balance of velocity and rigor through scalable, asynchronous decision-making practices
• Maintain and strengthen a team and community culture of growth, openness, trust, rigor, humility, mutual support, and psychological safety
• Advocate for and enhance PL’s asynchronous, autonomous, and distributed working culture
• Lead the process of recruiting great engineers for your project, in collaboration with PL’s recruiting team
• Support and guide other people-managers at Protocol Labs as a member of PL’s engineering management discipline

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

• Demonstrable success as an engineering lead/manager fostering highly-functional, healthy, inclusive and collaborative teams
• Technical credibility through lengthy software engineering experience with back-end and distributed systems, networking, and infrastructure
• A strong desire for and history of contributions to open source projects and communities
• Experience working with and/or managing geographically distributed teams
• Significant experience building and growing diverse, high performance engineering teams
• An orientation towards building software and engineering infrastructure to support high-quality, enterprise-grade products
• Excitement and passion for the Web 3.0 space, and for working with teams both in Protocol Labs and the broader community on the shared goals of our movement

Bonus Points for:

• Experience with or deep knowledge of cryptography, globally distributed systems, blockchain or other related domains
• Demonstrable open source community curation and leadership experience

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 $260,000 to $340,000, 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.

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 (web3, cryptography, networks, distributed systems) and cultures (startups, research, open-source, distributed work).

About Filecoin and Lotus

Filecoin is a crypto-based distributed storage network that aims to store humanity’s most valuable information. The Filecoin network uses advanced cryptography to store over 15 exabytes of data and verify its continued storage every day! Lotus is the Go-based reference implementation of the Filecoin protocol. Lotus nodes power the blockchain consensus layer of the network, receive data from storage clients, and run cryptographic proofs on that data.

As Senior Engineer for Lotus at Protocol Labs, you will....

• Work on the architecture and development of the reference implementation of the Filecoin protocol as it relates to protocol consensus, governance, security, and scalability. 
• Your role will have a major impact on the entire Filecoin ecosystem, as your work enables and protects the network consensus, and sustains the onboarding of new storage onto the network.
• Serve as a technical leader providing guidance to the team, anticipating issues, and ensuring we maintain a high bar of quality. 
• Work with a vibrant open source community for user feedback and adoptions.
• Be responsible for both hands-on coding and architecture work.

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

• A strong passion for blockchain technology and trustless systems.
• 5+ years (10+ preferred) of experience working as a software engineer on distributed systems and data storage.
• Experience developing on-premises software.
• Programming experience and proficiency with Go is ideal, but programming experience in one or more of the following is required: Rust, C, C++, Haskell, Java, Scala, Python, Clojure.
• Ability to analyze and improve the design of complex computation systems. 
• Ability to evaluate new components and dependencies keeping in mind long-term maintenance and deployment requirements.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Pragmatic “get it done” attitude and the ability to provide and receive constructive feedback.
• BSc degree in Computer Science, Electrical & Computer Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience (though a “traditional” education or degree is NOT required).

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 $217,000 to $297,000, 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.

#LI-Remote

About Protocol Labs

Protocol Labs is a research and development laboratory that has built and scaled multiple projects that have made great contributions to the web3 ecosystem. To fuel our next phase of growth, we’ve created a new team — Network Services — to provide services and capabilities that our projects and the broader ecosystem can leverage, including design, video, events, operations, content, IT, and more. 

About the Protocol Labs Network

The Protocol Labs Network (PLN) is a community of open source teams, projects, and organizations focused on researching, developing, and deploying network protocols to improve humanity’s most influential technology, the Internet. The groups are supported by Protocol Labs (PL) through grants and investments – think of it as a VC + crypto fund model – and are built on top of PL’s layer 0 and layer 1 protocols, such as IPFS, IPLD, Filecoin, libp2p, etc. As this ecosystem grows, these projects invest in the network itself, and the network grows along with it, which in turn benefits and incentivizes this ongoing evolution of Web2 to Web3. PLN is made up of 450+ projects, companies, and organizations. 

As the Network Engagement Program Manager, you’ll play a critical role in strengthening and growing the PL community. You’ll work with 150+ founders and teams across the network to understand their needs, then develop programs to support and help them grow. Your role will span a wide range of activities, including content creation and marketing, event production, products and systems, operations, and more. 

If you’re passionate about building communities, empowering developers, improving the web, and helping game-changing technologies succeed, we’d love to hear from you.

As Network Engagement Program Manager at Protocol Labs, your team will…

• Develop a deep understanding of the web3 space and needs of the Protocol Labs Network, then synthesize and share your findings with network teams
• Onboard founders and teams onto the network, and connect them with resources and expertise to help them scale. 
• Organize conferences, meetups, and events to foster collaboration and connection across the network.
• Develop web3 products, systems, and tools to facilitate network connectivity and solve common problems (e.g., network directory, etc.). 
• Develop and implement an integrated marketing and content strategy to grow our audience and highlight teams in the network. 
• Build processes and systems to gather feedback and track the impact of our programs, then devise ways to improve them.

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

• Have 10-15 years relevant experience in developer-focused community
• Have a keen understanding of different developers’ and users’ needs, wills, and cultures, especially in open source or web3. They should love interacting with you and hearing from you, and you should have a genuine concern for their professional success.
• Have excellent communication skills with a talent for bringing together cross-functional teams for large projects
• Get a kick out of leveraging first principle thinking to achieve great results
• Pride yourself in being a self-starter, thriving even without much direction.
• A rigorous, process-driven work style backed by an ability to communicate effectively.
• Handle both complexity and ambiguity well.
• You have experience building scalable developer communities.
• Ability to thrive with a high level of self-direction, autonomy and responsibility
• Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills

Bonus points:

• Experience with open source communities / projects
• Experience with distributed orgs
• Technical or developer experience

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 $270,000 to $312,000, 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.

#LI-Remote

#LI-MT1

About ConsensusLab

ConsensusLab is a research group in Protocol Labs Research that focuses on consensus and related distributed computing problems that lie at the heart of decentralized systems. We explore fundamental problems of coordination, consistency, and scalability, and help engineering teams by addressing key bottlenecks in operational systems and networks (such as Filecoin, IPFS and libp2p). We collaborate with academia and the wider open-source community to deliver world-class research in understanding how decentralized systems scale and interconnect. 

As a Startup Operator at ConsensusLab, you will… 

• Bridge the final stages of the research-to-deployment pipeline by leading productization, marketing, and business development around the technology produced in ConsensusLab, with an initial focus on the Interplanetary Consensus (IPC) blockchain scaling framework.
• Attract developers to build on the IPC stack. Build relationships with developers, users, and validators, understand their pain points, and develop new programs to address them.
• Drive and collect user research. Provide the “voice of the user” in discussions with the team. Play advocate for user needs to keep broader teams focused and honest on whether user problems are actually getting solved. Contribute to roadmaps and give feedback on technical design docs, ensuring that priority user needs are incorporated.
• Drive internal and external communications around IPC. Develop and deploy documentation, websites, explainers, and other support and marketing materials to facilitate newcomers joining the community.
• Craft the onboarding and engagement strategy for newcomers to the stack and use a data-driven approach to iterate and improve their experience. Create and monitor metrics to monitor how the initiative achieves product-market fit.
• Use your unique position and knowledge to identify high-leverage opportunities across the org (e.g. with ecosystem strategy, research prioritization, services opportunities, etc.)
• Identify and lead key business development opportunities that provide high leverage to the product-market fit of our stack. Identify opportunities for close collaboration with ecosystem partners that can accelerate product-market fit and work with the ecosystem team to unify collab strategy. 

• Explore new business models through incentive design and engineering and drive awareness beyond our core communities.

• Attend and present at industry and community events in the space in order to draw attention to the stack, forge new relationships, and pursue the remaining goals.

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

• A generalist “founder” skillset and experience running your own startup or high-growth organization, or high-level early-stage roles in such a setting. 
• Past leadership in the creation and execution of product roadmaps for highly technical endeavours, balancing input across user needs, engineering teams, and stakeholders. 
• Experience with Web3 communities and a strong network in the space. Experience forging collaborations and organically growing solid ecosystems and communities.
• Strong product management experience with fluency in the user research toolkit.
• Exceptional project management skills to execute effectively and efficiently. 
• Self-starter mentality, and the drive and ability to lift new projects single-handedly.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills.
• Understanding of programming fundamentals and of the engineering process.

Bonus points…

• Professional experience in consensus, L2 networks, or blockchain scaling projects.
• Background in software engineering.
• MSc or PhD in a relevant topic, or equivalent experience in a research setting.
• Professional experience in data science and analytics.
• Experience with open-source communities and projects.
• Previous experience with the Protocol Labs ecosystem (e.g. Filecoin, IPFS, or libp2p).

Key Summary: The People Manager, PL Network role is highly versatile and execution oriented. You will have the opportunity to add value to the collective of 200+ PL Network startups around the world, building the future of web3, by managing projects and strategic initiatives that elevate their people practices and programming.

About Protocol Labs (PL): PL is an open-source research, development, and deployment laboratory. Our projects include IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and many more. We aim to make human existence orders of magnitude better through technology. We are a fully distributed company. Our team members work remotely and in the open to improve the internet — humanity’s most important technology — as we explore new advances in computing and related fields.

About the People Team: The People Team enables PL’s success through - 

• Designing and leading innovative people programs and practices that help people to do their best work
• Supporting all initiatives involving engaging, developing, and retaining people
• Driving sustainable and responsible organizational growth through effective talent management and development 

As People Manager, PL Network, you will… 

• Be the program manager for our initiative to elevate PL Network Companies’ practices and programming, while integrating our mission, strategy, and data into design, consultation and recommendations
• Partner with and coach PL Network founders and leaders to grow and scale their people functions
• Collaborate with Recruiting and DevCo leaders across the organization to implement people projects and strategic initiatives within the PL Network
• Iterate on related people practices and programming to help scale impactful initiatives across selected PL Network Companies
• Directly manage the People Coordinator, PL Network
• Review/audit work and identify + implement opportunities to scale, streamline and improve the function 
• Lead ad hoc projects

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

• BA/BS degree 
• 3+ years of People Operations experience, preferably in the tech/startup industry 
• Demonstrated ability to work within and be successful in a high-growth environment, adapting and adjusting quickly to changing priorities 
• Demonstrated People Business Partnership (HRBP) experience 
• Experience documenting people practices for a large and diverse audience
• Built various People programs and solutions with the full life cycle in mind (ideation, MVP, launch, measure, iterate)
• Excellent written and verbal communication and consultative skills; the ability to translate content for different audiences
• Experience working in a collaborative team environments
• The ability to build and maintain successful relationships with all levels of the organization by achieving credibility and influencing key decisions 
• Excellent attention to detail and accuracy with your own work and reviewing the work of others
• Discretion and sound judgment handling sensitive and confidential data
• Project management skills and ability to drive programs and execute on projects independently and resourcefully
• Excellent Google suite skills
• Strong interest in Web3, cryptocurrencies, OSS and decentralized work

  As a distributed team, we hire anywhere in the world, and look for people with unique perspectives and diverse backgrounds.   The base pay for this position currently ranges from [X] to [Y], plus cryptocurrency and opportunities for upside through performance rewards in cryptocurrency.  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.  

Director for Research Development, Starfleet @ PLN

We seek a talented human with a passion leading groundbreaking research projects and guiding teams into delivering quantifiable results in a structured process, interfacing with stakeholders and consumers of the tech produced.

Key Summary

We are hiring a Director to drive Research & Development at Protocol Labs. We're looking for an individual who thoroughly understands the principles of fast research, distributed systems and product development.

As a Director, you will work with an experienced interdisciplinary team to design and build resilient systems for tomorrow’s web. You will collaborate closely with lab leads to drive key aspects of roadmap definition, coordination, execution and delivery. You must be responsive, flexible and able to succeed within a fast-paced environment. 

What is Research Development at Protocol Labs

At the Research Development group, we translate theory into reality. We pick the most challenging problems that are needed to be solve to cross the chasms of planetary scale adoption of decentralized technologies and we take them heads on with a pragmatic and rigorous approach, measuring our progress at every step of the way and interfacing with the integrations teams at Web3 and not only to get the technology in the hands of people.

This direction creates an incredibly rich and fertile ground for ideation and prototyping to happen, with a launch pad for shipping those new ideas into reality, testing them in real world scenarios and creating maximum impact for the research performed.

As the Director for Research Development at Protocol labs, you will… 

• Synthesize and align a cohesive strategy for how each Research Development Lab can maximally contribute to Network impact
• Interface with the Research Development Lab Leads and drive effective decision making that gets translated into a consistent Roadmap
• Interact with a multitude of Web3 and Research projects and other key stakeholders to find opportunities for collaboration and new teams to join the Research Development front
• Drive cross-team decision-making on technical decisions and ensure that appropriate resources are employed to deliver high quality results
• Identify, assess, track and mitigate issues and risks at multiple levels
• Create, maintain and disseminate project information to stakeholders
• Lead cross functional project meetings, communication, and decision making
• Lead milestone reviews & present project status to the executive team

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

• Comfort discussing strategic trade offs with engineers, understand the technology and develop a good intuition to aid on the decision making process
• Experience in gathering requirements, developing specifications, and driving execution
• Product & Project Management experience.
• Experience managing hardware/software product releases
• Ability to drive effective teamwork, communication, collaboration and commitment across multiple disparate groups
• Experience with leading 3rd party teams, engineering teams and business stakeholders

Bonus Points: 

• Experience working in Open Source projects
• Experience working in Volunteer led organizations
• Demonstrated ability to manage project/task prioritization, project planning and schedule development
• Proven success of influencing and developing productive working relationships with diverse technical teams and stakeholders
• Strong technical and problem solving skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

#LI-Remote

#LI-MT1

We seek a Project Lead to operate a team and drive the maintenance and deployment of the foundational Internet Core Service for randomness in collaboration with the League of Entropy

The Drand Project

Drand (pronounced “dee-rand”) is an unbiasable randomness beacon that can be used by all sorts of applications as their randomness source. The League of Entropy is a network maintained by multiple partners that use drand to generate unbiasable randomness, a critical service for many applications.

Learn more about drand and the League of Entropy at https://drand.love

Project Lead at Protocol Labs

This isn’t an ordinary lead position. We are a distributed organization of over 150 collaborators (worldwide), split across 15 countries and with no regular offices.  Protocol Labs currently has 6 Open Source Projects, which are maintained and developed by internal teams (between 2 and 40 people), as well as large ecosystems of contributors. 

Day-to-day, you’ll support the project through cross-functional problem solving, project ownership, data analysis, and research to answer open questions and provide the drand team and the League of Entropy with the versatility and creative thinking it needs to reach its goals. 

You’ll also help create processes and tools that enable Protocol Labs’s unique culture of innovation, collaboration, and performance.

As a Project Lead of the Drand Project, you will:

• Lead the team that will maintain a high reliability service on which critical operations, that can potentially move tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in value, depend. 
• Carry the vision of the project you will be owning, taking into account the future potential and input from stakeholders to identify new opportunities to grow the project.
• Create and maintain plans using various project management tools, helping initiatives stay on track to meet their quarterly or annual targets.
• Manage multiple high-profile external collaborations and drive consensus powered by the League of Entropy’s decentralized governance model.
• Drive interest in drand and lead the recruitment and onboarding of new partners to the League of Entropy.
• Communicate regularly with stakeholders and adjacent teams to build a shared understanding and accommodate competing priorities.
• Lead the process of recruiting world-class engineers in collaboration with PL’s recruiting team.
• Own the overall developer education and documentation platform, including sample applications to case studies, tutorials, and showcases.
• And much more!

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

• Demonstrable success fostering highly-functional, inclusive, collaborative, distributed teams as a Product Owner/Engineering Lead/Manager.
• Experience influencing multi-institution efforts under decentralized governance.
• Ability to thrive with a high level of self-direction, autonomy and responsibility.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, and experience communicating across different audiences, including users, partners, and developers.
• A passion for collaborating with people across Protocol Labs and the League of Entropy toward our shared mission.
• Familiarity with cryptography, networking, and infrastructure concepts.

Highly-valued bonus points include:

• Product management of distributed systems (e.g. databases, crypto projects and/or networks).
• Experience working on open-source projects, leading non-profit endeavours, or managing communities.
• Experience with or deep knowledge of globally distributed systems, cryptography, blockchain, or other related domains.
• A track record of recruiting and retaining top talent to your teams.

#LI-REMOTE

#LI-MT1

About Outercore

Outercore is the division of Protocol Labs that leads technical, business, and community programs to build the future of p2p distributed networks and empower our many communities – from decentralized web developers, to browsers, to blockchain projects, to data storage hosts. Everything Outercore does is open source. We’re comfortable sharing unfinished work and trying out new things. The goal is to come up with solutions the entire ecosystem can benefit from. 

About this Position

With more than 4000 storage provider systems distributed across 44 countries and more than 16EiB of raw capacity, Filecoin is the largest decentralized storage network that exists today. The storage providers are the key infrastructure providers running the Filecoin software stack serving storage capacity to the network and hosting the client datasets. 

We are looking for a senior leader to grow the Filecoin Storage provider ecosystem that forms the foundation of this network. This position reports into the executive staff of Outercore with P&L responsibilities. In this role you will own the end-to-end responsibility of setting the strategy and execution on expanding an already thriving ecosystem and help productize our software stack to build the next-gen infrastructure layer for Web3. 

As Head of Storage Provider Product & Solutions on Outercore, you will…

• Own the global GTM strategy to grow the storage provider ecosystem
• Drive and own the SP product & solutions strategy for tooling and integration with third-party software vendors (e.g. external key managers)
• Manage and grow an existing team of technical product managers, GTM leads, solutions architects and forward deployed engineers  
• Manage and create new programs driving increased growth of providers to the network
• Manage and drive collaboration with third-party hardware vendors (e.g.  AMD, Seagate)
• Drive and coordinate analysis & assessment of business requirements and translate into service capability and feature requirements.
• Steward solutions engineering teams that support large petabyte-scale deployments 
• Build out new teams as needed to achieve adoption objectives 
• Steward and leverage network-native development principles and mechanisms to achieve flywheel objectives, such as leaning into ecosystem bounties/grants, outsourced work, public roadmaps, open-source development principles, and more
• Ensure that every user of the PL stack – developers, storage clients, storage providers, retrieval providers, notaries, community governance members, etc. – has an exceptional experience with the stack of storage solutions 
• Mentor and grow product and technical leaders within the Outercore organization
• Define and track metrics that demonstrate continuous operational effectiveness and improvement opportunities within your product areas

You may be a fit for this role if you…

• Have led product and GTM teams to build complex technical systems at scale
• Have deep understanding of hardware and software instructure (storage, compute, networking) at scale
• Proven track record in managing, developing, deploying, and/or maintaining complex enterprise services, scalable distributed systems, cloud services, business reporting tools, and technologies.
• Have led large product and engineering teams (20+ teammates) in the past, and have had multiple direct reports
• Have worked on or led open-source projects or engineering organizations in the past
• Have experience working with cross-functional stakeholders to align multi-year roadmaps for product/engineering organizations – e.g. company leadership, technical leads, product leads
• Hands-on experience in big data, data management, and business outcomes analysis – interest and ability to roll up sleeves and work along with key architects and engineers in building market-leading decentralized storage services
• Are hyper detail-oriented, extremely organized, and pride yourself on your ability to structure large, ambiguous systems into sensible, tractable ones
• Have strong written and verbal communication skills with a talent for precise articulations of customer problems
• Enjoy working closely with engineering teams, and are able to earn the respect of technical leaders and product leaders alike
• Will do whatever it takes to make your team successful, and are not afraid to roll up your sleeves to get the job done
• Have a computer science, math, or science degree, or software engineering experience

Bonus Points: 

• Product management with crypto projects or networks
• Experience working with and/or contributions to open-source software projects
• Are self-taught in some field, and consider yourself a voracious learner
• 15+ years professional experience

#LI-Remote

VPE of PL Starfleet: 

The PL Starfleet VP of Engineering will lead engineering and research development team growth, execution, and organization. To help propel our 100+ team of engineers, operators, and researchers forward, we’re looking for an inspirational technical leader ready to break new ground in web3. A successful candidate has significant people management experience, sharp business acumen, big-picture strategic vision, an innately collaborative style, and strong technology fundamentals. And since Protocol Labs is still a fast-growing startup, we’ll need someone with a track record of building something from nothing—hiring, developing processes, and reorganizing to fit business priorities. 

Key areas of responsibility:

Build a world-class Engineering organization

• Embody and evolve the PL Starfleet engineering culture as the team reaches scale (from our current 100+)
• Plan and build the team’s capabilities
• Develop the 2-3 year vision for the team, set engineering growth strategy, and translate this into viable 6-12 month plans and roadmaps, working closely with the larger Leadership Team
• Determine necessary headcount/skills/structure to achieve current and future goals
• Recruit at a world-class level—actively network, reach out to candidates, and conduct other activities to attract top talent
• Help engineers understand why their contributions are valuable and how they tie to business impact
• Coordinate closely with people/recruiting team on hiring strategy
• Lead the development of interview process for ICs and managers alike 
• Instill a hiring culture on the team, including adhering to the hiring process and maintaining a high bar
• Build an Engineering employee brand: speak on panels, encourage Open Source contributions and blog posts about non-proprietary aspects of our technology architecture and usage

Manage the Engineering Organization

• Manage / coach Engineering Managers and other senior engineers
• Ensure everyone on the team has the resources and opportunities to learn and grow — formal/informal training, mentorship, stretch goals, attendance at conferences
• Create and apply engineering-specific development expectations; use these to provide regular feedback
• Reorganize and effectively manage change as needed to best fit with the business needs
• Collaborate with the PL Comp WG on compensation and employee rewards
• Manage team dynamics and employee relations issues and be accountable for resolution
• Develop the staffing logic and execute it, factoring in engineering preferences and professional development
• Instill norms, cultural values (i.e. collaboration, async first, self-direction, etc) and lead by example.

Drive Engineering Team Execution / Delivery

• Achieve results and hold teams accountable to deliver on their own goals
• Regularly evaluate team structure to ensure the organization can move quickly
• Devise methods to measure output and effectiveness week over week and present findings and bottlenecks
• Inspire and motivate the team to strive for excellence
• Develop and promote processes which ensure timely delivery of products
• Fill in the blanks and verify that the engineering team has the right tools, technology, and processes to build quality, scalable and reliable systems
• Codify and disseminate best practices (i.e. testing, code reviews, pair programming)
• Innovate and experiment to optimize team output

Collaborate with PL Starfleet Leadership Team

• Represent the Engineers and Researchers as a member of the Leadership Team
• Communicate plans, challenges, and updates to other functional heads
• Seek to understand challenges facing other teams or the company at large and provide input, advice and/or possible solutions
• Nurture Engineering’s strong relationship/alignment with other orgs and teams

Characteristics of a Successful Candidate:

• 10+ years of experience, with a strong track record of success in great companies: been consistently promoted up the chain of responsibility, ideally at multiple companies so they have more than one perspective on technical leadership. Experience in systems/technology or other highly technical industry would be helpful.
• Produced at scale: built and delivered products that have scaled in the marketplace with a proven track record of shipping high quality products on tight timelines; designed and executed processes to make this happen
• Strong technology fundamentals and the ability to make high impact decisions about the long term viability/scalability of technical solutions. Communication via system design diagrams and ability to toggle between breadth and depth
• People management / coaching: recognized and helped recruit amazing people, learned how to effectively manage non-performers, views feedback as a gift, has courage, and developed their team members into successful leaders in their own right
• Humility and empathy: made mistakes—even very public ones—and can speak openly and humbly about what happened and how the problem was solved
• Business-minded and collaborative: spent time working across an entire organization, and built relationships to understand the ins and outs of the whole business
• Inspirational followership: speaks externally on a regular basis to help build the brand of a company or product; has a ready roster of high performing engineers who would quit their jobs to work for them
• Naturally effective communicator: structured, clear, great listener, can boil complex concepts into straightforward ideas; also knows whom to involve, when, and how

#LI-Remote

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Launchpad at Protocol Labs

At Protocol Labs, we are working on a new effort to scale technical talent into web3. PLN Launchpad is a six-week, full-time onboarding program designed to train, develop, and match technical talent at scale with opportunities in Web3 across the Protocol Labs Network (PLN). 

Launchpad aims to help accelerate non-Web3 talent into this new frontier and help web3-savvy contributors quickly ramp up their InterPlanetary web3 knowledge, grow strong PL Network community bonds, and find their best-fit role in the PL Network. This unique role would work with each cohort to onboard various technical talent into our technical stack. You would be both leading demo sessions and workshops and facilitating technical deep dives across the PLN. 

Learn more here: 

Check out our curriculum: https://curriculum.pl-launchpad.io/

Specifically, we would love this person to own:

• Be responsible for the technical growth of each launchpad cohort participant and overall program health.
• Have a deep love of teaching and continuously learning new technologies.
• Source and organize various educational materials, live trainings, events/cohorts and mini projects to implement PL Network Launchpad and related programs
• Facilitate technical talks and demos with engineers working on some of our core protocols. 
• Plan, attend and support in the facilitation “colo week” a one-week in-person session per cohort (location varies). 
• Participate and organize community events around the Launchpad curriculum to a variety of audiences.
• Anything else that helps bring our curriculum to the world and gets feedback from program participants, hiring managers, and community members. 
• Support non-technical talent as they level up in their technical skills. 

Developer Relations role’s main goal is to raise awareness of PL & Filecoin technologies , educate technical audiences and engage with the builder's community. It’s a role that combines technical, content creation and community management together. 

This is more work than any one individual could take on on their own. You’ll be working on the cohort management team and closely collaborating with the larger Launchpad team which includes our curriculum, logistics, and recruiting team. We’re a team that values sharing knowledge, teaching others, and giving our participants the tools to be successful. Once comfortable with our stack up to 20% of this role will be spent contributing to our open source projects to keep up on their technical skills. 

Ideal candidates will have...

• A technical background, and can live code in one or more languages (preferably Rust, Python, Go, Javascript/TypeScript)
• Experience teaching, writing, or hosting workshops for developers
• Previous technical teaching experience blended with past dev advocate//community engineer experience
• Experience with open source contribution and worked on open source technologies
• Strong interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills, ability to build relationships across many different teams. 
• Enjoys taking initiative to solve open-ended problems

Bonus Points…

• Previous teaching experience or curriculum/technical writing
• Experience working with distributed systems (cyber security, cloud computing, networks etc.)
• Able to teach technical concepts for technical and non-technical audiences
• Experience speaking at conferences, developer summits, or virtual events
• Experience working in or managing open source software communities
• Masters degree in computer science, adult education, or a related field
• Previous experience working on engineering documentation
• Prior experience in partner engineer or client facing support engineer

We welcome candidates from non-traditional backgrounds including previous founders, bootcamp graduates, and career changers. We encourage you to apply even if you do not hit every item on this list. 

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We are looking for a Senior Product Lead to join the PL Engineering and Research team (EngRes), helping to grow and evolve our stack of web3 protocols, including IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and IPLD.

Web3 is the next generation of the internet, with the goal of creating a fairer and more decentralized web. Our mission at PL EngRes is to scale & unlock new opportunities for IPFS, Filecoin + libp2p by onboarding the best developers and contributors in the world, unlocking breakthroughs in protocol utility & capability that drive large-scale adoption, and scaling network-native research & development across the PL Network. 

One of our core priorities is to understand and improve the core IPFS/Filecoin adoption flywheel. In other words, we want to make strategic investments in improving the core factors that influence organic adoption of IPFS & Filecoin, leading to increased adoption of these technologies overall. PL EngRes is actively hiring a Senior Product Lead for our EngRes team who can fully own and drive the adoption flywheel for the joint IPFS and Filecoin stack. The Senior Product Lead would lead a large and growing team of product managers, engineers, and teams in the broader Protocol Labs ecosystem to build critical components for the adoption flywheel and increase adoption of IPFS/Filecoin overall. The Senior Product Lead should be able to inspire and lead a significant technical team, think creatively about business and ecosystem development, provide guidance and feedback on technical roadmaps, and attract new contributors to the Protocol Labs stack.

As a Senior Product Lead for PL Starfleet EngRes, you will…

• Own the adoption flywheel for the IPFS/Filecoin stack
• Deeply understand how the flywheel works and what’s needed in order for it to turn
• Identify components, systems, products, and programs that are needed to turn and grow the adoption flywheel
• Work with and lead the existing product and technical teams building core flywheel components, and provide guidance on their roadmaps to ensure that these systems land and achieve their core objectives
• Steward business development and solutions engineering teams that support large petabyte-scale storage and enterprise clients
• Build out new teams as needed to achieve adoption objectives
• Steward and leverage network-native development principles and mechanisms to achieve flywheel objectives, such as leaning into ecosystem bounties/grants, outsourced work, public roadmaps, open-source development principles, and more
• Ensure that every user of the PL stack – developers, storage clients, storage providers, retrieval providers, notaries, community governance members, etc. – has an exceptional experience with the stack of protocols
• Mentor and grow product and technical leaders within the EngRes organization

You may be a fit for this role if you…

• Have led engineering teams to build complex technical systems at scale
• Have led large product and engineering teams (20+ teammates) in the past, and have had multiple direct reports
• Have experience working with enterprise storage and software systems, as well as enterprise clients
• Have had some experience with enterprise business development efforts in the past
• Have worked on or led open-source projects or engineering organizations in the past
• Have experience working with cross-functional stakeholders to align multi-year roadmaps for product/engineering organizations – e.g. company leadership, technical leads, product leads
• Are hyper detail-oriented, extremely organized, and pride yourself on your ability to structure large, ambiguous systems into sensible, tractable ones
• Have strong written and verbal communication skills with a talent for precise articulations of customer problems
• Enjoy working closely with engineering teams, and are able to earn the respect of technical leaders and product leaders alike
• Will do whatever it takes to make your team successful, and are not afraid to roll up your sleeves to get the job done
• Have a computer science, math, or science degree, or software engineering experience

Bonus Points: 

• Product management with crypto projects or networks
• Experience working with and/or contributions to open-source software projects
• Are self-taught in some field, and consider yourself a voracious learner
• 10+ years professional experience

#LI-MT1

#LI-REMOTE

Network Goods at Protocol Labs

Protocol Labs doesn’t just build core protocols for the decentralized web. We think builders and researchers should work on a variety of high-leverage goals for the betterment of humanity.  For that reason, we're building the Network Goods team, a lab to develop and deploy better methods of funding the creation and maintenance of public goods, commons, infrastructure, and knowledge. 

As part of our team, you’ll be enabling outcomes at the forefront of our mission. Our team is granted both the freedom to develop knowledge by working on novel applications and a responsibility to contribute those skills toward a flourishing future for all of humanity.  You’ll feel at home working with us if your knowledge and optimism drive you to craft creative solutions working around evolving needs.

As BD & Partnerships at Protocol Labs you will…

• Identify, strategize, and close high-impact fundraising for public goods efforts within Protocol Labs and in the broader public goods community
• Identify, structure and develop strategic relationships with mission-aligned partners to exponentially grow communities supporting public goods.
• Collaborate with academia and the broader community in exploring new and out-of-the-box economic models to fund and govern public goods
• Work in a fully asynchronous and remote team.

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

• Experience sourcing, structuring, and closing fundraising for early stage and high growth organizations (bonus points if it was your own organization!)
• A track record of developing and growing high-value strategic partnerships
• Familiarity with Web2 and Web3 ecosystems and how the industries are evolving.
• A self-starter attitude and a love of navigating complexity and ambiguity to deliver results.
• A rigorous, process-driven work style backed by an ability to communicate effectively.
• Strong analytical, problem solving, and interpersonal skills.
• Deep flexibility and creativity with the ability to adapt to fast-changing needs and priorities.

Bonus points if you have...

• Prior growth, business strategy or development experience in the Web3 ecosystem or prior experience in running your own startup or a project providing a public good.
• Experience with and the desire to improve specific aspects of the public-goods-funding process.
• A technical background or strong familiarity (or fascination with) with Web3 technologies.
• Technical familiarity (or fascination with) with relevant flavors of economics (behavioral economics models, cryptoeconomic models, decentralized governance tooling).

About Filecoin and Lotus

Filecoin is a crypto based distributed storage network that aims to store humanity’s most valuable information. The Filecoin network uses advanced cryptography to store over 15 exabytes of data, and prove its continued storage every day! Lotus is the Go-based reference implementation of the Filecoin protocol, and the Lotus miner handles the process of receiving, storing, and proving those 15 exabytes of data!

As the Data Storage Tech Lead at Protocol Labs, you will....

• Work on the architecture and development of main reference implementations of the Filecoin protocol as it relates to enterprise level data storage service. Your role will have a major impact on the entire Filecoin ecosystem, as your work will enable the scaling of data onboarding. 
• Serve as a technical leader providing guidance to the team, anticipating issues and ensuring we maintain a high bar of quality. 
• Work with a vibrant open source community for user feedback and adoptions
• Be responsible for both hands-on coding and architecture work.

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

• 5+ years (10+ preferred) of experience working as a software engineer on storage and distributed systems.
• Experience developing on-premises enterprise software.
• Programming experience and proficiency with Go is ideal, but programming experience in one or more of the following is required: Rust, C, C++, Haskell, Java, Scala, Python, Clojure.
• Ability to analyze, criticize, and improve the design of complex computation systems. 
• Ability to evaluate new components and dependencies keeping in mind long-term maintenance and deployment requirements.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Pragmatic “get it done” attitude and the ability  to provide and receive constructive feedback.
• BSc degree in Computer Science, Electrical & Computer Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience (though a “traditional” education or degree is NOT required).
• An interest in blockchain technology and cryptography.

As a vital Protocol Labs Recruiting team member, the Executive Recruiter works closely with our leadership teams to identify and nurture promising passive and active leadership candidates from various channels. We work in a remote environment and seek a recruiter who is a self-starter, a great communicator, personable, professional, and upbeat! We're obsessive about candidate experience and aim to treat every candidate we engage as a community member, regardless of the outcome. If this sounds like you, we'd love to hear from you!

Talent at Protocol Labs 

The Talent Team at Protocol Labs powers our work. Protocol Labs is a product-development lab, but behind the protocols and tools we build, behind the research and spec work, and our implementations are passionate people, teammates, and community members. The Talent Team ensures that the Protocol Labs team remains happy, aligned, and productive. Protocol Labs works at the intersection of many exciting fields (crypto, networks, distributed systems) and cultures (startups, research, open source, distributed work). The Talent Team has the challenging and exciting task of taking the best from these cultures to shape how we work at PL and ensure we all grow as people and professionals. This happens in an environment of curiosity, passion, and a love for open source.

Responsibilities:

• Partner with executive leadership to understand current and future hiring needs. 
• Create creative research strategies, talent map companies, understand competitors, and become an expert in web3.
• Identify, source, manage, nurture and track candidates using a variety of sourcing channels.
• Running a weekly sync with leadership to provide updates on the search. 
• Developing and owning the interview process, including candidate preparation, follow-ups, and reference checks.
• Handle the offer process and lead the charge for the candidate's transition and onboarding process post-hire.
• Become the subject matter expert for leadership recruiting in our wider network of 100s of companies.

Requirements

• 7+ years of executive or leadership recruiting experience in a competitive market.
• Experience building out leadership recruitment processes from scratch in fast-paced environments.
• Stakeholder management skills and the ability to interface in a remote environment with senior leadership at Protocol Labs and other companies in our wider network. 
• In-depth knowledge of recruitment strategies at the executive/leadership level, including the understanding of creative candidate sourcing methods for leadership candidates.
• Ability to understand and convey opportunity complexity in a polished and professional manner and to capture the attention of busy, C-level candidates.
• Proven track record of hiring both technical and non-technical leadership candidates.
• A growth mindset and the ability to proactively anticipate needs and present solutions. 
• A comfortability with ambiguity and the ability to adapt to changing dynamics as needed.

Bonus Points

• Recruiting experience in the cryptography and/or research space.
• A familiarity with hiring in web3, crypto, or blockchain.
• You are a subject-matter expert with Greenhouse or GEM.

Key Summary

We are looking for a software security engineer that can contribute toward the design, implementation and optimization of application security practices within our different software development teams. If you’re passionate about security and open-source development and prefer to be on the makers’ side of things while still nurturing an attacker mindset, this role is ideal for you!

The ideal candidate will help shape a brand new security team and drive trust on the decentralized Internet. They will do this by solving hard security problems in areas like fuzzing, security-focused code review (including dynamic and static analysis), security-focused testing and design review, software supply chain management (SBOM, monitoring, etc.), threat modeling, risk analysis, and risk management.

About the Network Operations team

The Network Operations Team’s mission is to grow adoption and growth of the decentralized Internet by building software infrastructure for implementation of the Filecoin, IPFS, and Drand protocols, and operating them as services that can be consumed in a secure, reliable, and scalable manner. We succeed through teamwork, favoring simplicity over sophistication, and fostering a sense of community.

As an Application Security Engineer at Protocol Labs, you will…

• Identify the areas and components whose security needs improvement. Work with project teams to perform proper threat modelling and determine the measures to be taken.
• Implement CI/CD level fuzzing on core components (mostly in Go and Rust).
• Help us automate and contribute to, or develop, open-source tools to improve our security posture.
• Contribute to internal security reviews and audits of our codebases.
• Identify security gaps and bring new processes or solutions to fix these.
• Be a security advocate within Protocol Labs.

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

• Have 4 years of experience in software engineering, with a focus on security
• Strong threat modeling skills, demonstrable experience in security engineering
• Software engineering and scripting experience (Go, Python, Rust; bash, semgrep, regexp)
• Security testing skills (static, dynamic and fuzz testing)
• Good understanding of common security flaws and bugs
• Good understanding of the DevOps philosophy and interest in GitOps
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills on both technical and non-technical issues
• A keen awareness of teamwork, process, and patterns of successful collaboration in an async environment.
• A will to challenge the status quo and bring the changes we need.

Bonus points…

• Experience working in a DevOps team
• Experience working with code analysis software
• Experience implementing fuzzing tests
• Experience with supply chain management
• Experience performing security audits, assessment or consulting in application security

The Developer Relations team, Compute over Data (Bacalhau), sits under the Engineering and Research in Protocol Labs and is responsible for driving the adoption of Bacalhau at scale. We are a rapidly growing team tasked with accelerating Bacalhau onboarding by creating a developer community, supporting documentation, and improving the developer experience. We are building the bridge between IPFS/Filecoin data and mass computation over data adoption. We are building a byzantine fault-tolerant distributed compute network that performs computations over data of any size, available on IPFS or via URL. 

The Bacalhau team is looking for an extraordinary Developer Relations Engineer to rally developers and data engineers around the world to help scale the adoption of Bacalhau and enable them to deploy their computations on Bacalhau.

Day-to-day, you might help us respond to community support questions, coordinate online and offline events, and write technical guides or update existing documentation. Week-to-week in this role, you might work on your next big demo, help plan larger conferences, or help identify a new web3/data engineering community to onboard.

This role is technical and requires traveling. If you’re up for the challenge, we’d love for you to apply.

Responsibilities...

• Writing and maintaining tutorials, guides, and documentation to help data owners understand the value proposition of Bacalhau and onboard petabytes of data seamlessly.
• Owning the development of technical case studies and pushing these to our community through various channels (blogs, social, docs, etc.)
• Organizing community events around new releases and milestones.
• Anything else that helps bring our project to the world and gets feedback from actual users

Ideal candidates will have...

• Extremely strong interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills.
• Experience writing documentation or producing other content to synthesize and simplify technical concepts for technical and non-technical audiences.
• Familiarity with peer-to-peer, decentralized, or blockchain technologies
• Experience with developer relations and developer support
• A technical background, and can code in one or more languages (preferably Rust, Python, Go, Javascript/TypeScript)
• And will enjoy taking the initiative to solve open-ended problems

Preferred Qualifications...

• Experience with creating highly technical content, tutorials, and blogs.
• Experience speaking at conferences, developer summits, or virtual events.
• Experience working in or managing open-source software communities.
• Experience teaching, writing, or hosting workshops.

Investor Relations at Protocol Labs

As a Content and Product Marketing Manager under the Investor Relations team, you will contribute in building out a world-class Web3 investor relations program. We are looking for an individual that will help synthesize and communicate Filecoin narratives to institutional and retail token holders. You will work under the mentorship of a Protocol Labs lead, while partnering closely with executive leadership, finance, legal, creative, ecosystem growth and other groups in the network.  You will be the focal point of  Content generated by the Investor Relations team, across content creation, partnerships, and managing the editorial and creative production process. Your ability to empathize and understand our token holders’ needs will be crucial to your success.

In Investor Relations at Protocol Labs, you will...

• Plan, develop and implement the overall Filecoin’s content strategy, delivery and promotions for token-holder audience 
• Coordinate workflows across functional teams - such as data science, ecosystem growth, product & engineering - while working with in-house and external writers/agencies to create the desired content and impact 
• Determine the type of advertising and marketing content, such as digital or social media, that needs to be created and distributed.
• Develop content governance guidelines for tone, style, and voice of all content, and ensuring they are followed and editorial strategy, so content is consistent across all delivery platforms
• Analyze brand and content marketing strategy to evaluate whether it's working or not while tracking and calculating content ROI
• Work closely with the Marketing & Branding team to prepare and coordinate key narratives, presentations and events  

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

• At least 5 years of content and product marketing in Tech, preferably in the Web3 industry 
• Demonstrated track record of developing product positioning, messaging and go-to-market strategies 
• Experience developing and executing content strategy for a Web3 audience
• Ability to communicate and work cross-functionally in a structured and clear manner to influence outcomes
• Critical eye and keen attention to detail on tonality and look-and-feel across various content on different platforms
• Ability to stay organized and thrive in an extremely fast paced environment
• Pride yourself in being a self-starter, carving paths through uncertainty
• Experience in cryptocurrency is required
• Excellent proficiency in written and spoken English 

Bonus Points

• Technical understanding of decentralized storage and compute, web3 infrastructure, Defi 
• Experience in a fast-growing startup environment