Rust P2P Networking Engineer

About Heliax

Heliax is a remote-first public goods lab which researches, develops, deploys, and maintains open-source protocols & mechanisms designed to serve the everyday needs of humanity. Using this, we build vertically integrated open-source products and networks that form coherent open systems which are capable of acting as an alternative to existing exploitative paradigms. With team members located around the world, 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. Heliax’ work include the Anoma protocol, a novel architecture for blockchains that enables a declarative paradigm for decentralized applications; Namada, a proof-of-stake L1 for interchain asset-agnostic privacy; Juvix and Vamp-IR, in the domain of languages for dApps and ZK circuits.

Overview

Blockchains do not scale to a global user-base of seven billion people. Rust engineering at Heliax focuses on building, extending, and maintaining decentralized, permissionless, and censorship-resistant protocols. We are looking for experienced P2P networking 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 engineering team, you will be working on the intent gossip and matchmaker projects implemented in Rust, heavily relying on libp2p. 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 the intent gossip network in coordination with other team members
• Evaluate algorithmic complexity, incentive compatibility, scalability, and resilience in P2P networking protocol
• Implement protocols in performant and cleanly abstracted Rust 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

Main Project The implementation of the Anoma protocol in Rust

Qualifications

• Prior experience with P2P networking programming, in Rust or other
• Deep familiarity with Rust abstractions, memory management, and concurrency
• Self-motivated & self-organized
• Interested in open-source technology and research applied to DLT

Bonus Qualifications

• Prior experience with Kademlia, libp2p, and/or BitTorrent
• Prior experience with large scale distributed systems
• Prior experience with network and systems engineering
• Prior experience with database design and optimization
• Prior experience in blockchain technology
• Prior experience implementing cryptography
• Prior experience with async Rust

Misc

Remote or local (Zürich/Zug, Berlin). When remote, preferred if mostly located within (+/- 3 hours) Central European time zones. Ideally someone who enjoys nature and hiking 🏔️.