Interchain GmbH is a 13-person company which works on core blockchain technology. We’re headquartered in Berlin, Germany, but our team stretches from New York, NY to Ulyanovsk, Russia. We keep in touch through Github, Slack, and Zoom, and meet in person periodically (when COVID permits). All in all, the software we develop secures billions of dollars in value across many different systems, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We strive to build world-class software while having plenty of laughs along the way.
So far, our engineering team has led development and stewardship of the Tendermint Core consensus engine and the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC), but now we’re also taking on feature development and maintenance for the Gaia blockchain node, the flagship client for the Cosmos Hub. The Cosmos Hub is one of the leading proof-of-stake blockchains and has been live in production for over a year — you can check out the code or take a look at a block explorer to learn more. We’re looking for skilled engineers to take the Cosmos Hub to the next level of performance and functionality.
As a software engineer on Gaia, you’ll be responsible for building, maintaining, and updating the Golang implementation of the Cosmos Hub. Activities include:
- Implementing new features for the Cosmos Hub such as cross-chain validation, staking derivatives, and proportional slashing, address potential performance bottlenecks, and improve internal software quality — depending on the nature of the features or improvements, this work may take place in either the Gaia repository or the Cosmos SDK repository
- Participating in open-source stewardship of the Gaia Github repository, reviewing community code submissions, answering questions, and coordinating with open-source collaborators
- Reviewing code, testing, benchmarking, and ensuring that standards of quality and test-case coverage are met by all contributions
- Keeping an ever-vigilant eye on security considerations and coordinating with team members to handle security incidents when they occur
There are no hard requirements on previous experience, but ideally you have:
- Excellent generalist programming ability, in a systems language such as Go, Rust, or C, and a working familiarity with consensus algorithms and distributed systems, TCP/IP networking, and blockchains or other distributed databases
- Expertise in systems design and an appropriate taste for simplicity, both in internal abstraction structure and in choice of third-party dependencies
- Top-notch communications skills, clear written prose, and a knack for working with a diverse range of contributors and users, synthesizing different perspectives, and mediating occasional disputes
- A high degree of personal responsibility and ownership: you’ll be responsible for setting deadlines and holding yourself accountable to them
- A home base within our working timezones, probably from UTC - 5 (New York) to UTC + 3 (Moscow), and the ability to travel to continental Europe at least occasionally (post-COVID)
Not sure if you're a fit? Please feel free to apply anyways, and we'll take it from there.
Interchain GmbH believes that great people come from a broad range of backgrounds, and that the diversity of our team is one of our strengths. Discrimination has no place at Interchain GmbH and we do not discriminate on the bases of race, color, gender, gender identity, national origin, age, religion, disability, or sexual orientation. We are committed to fighting bias and discrimination in our workplace and in our communities.