Senior Software Engineer

Interested in working on cutting-edge blockchain technology and creating equitable access to the global financial system? Since 2014, the mission-driven team at the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has helped fuel the tremendous growth of the Stellar blockchain network, an open-source platform that operates at high-scale today. Developers and companies around the world build on it, and the SDF team is expanding to support the rapidly growing and changing Stellar ecosystem. 

SDF is working on projects that push the envelope on Blockchain technology, from cross-chain interoperability to decentralized finance. This work allows underserved populations to take part in exciting new financial systems. 

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will work on mission-critical infrastructure for the Stellar network. The platforms, APIs and tools you build are the principal way that the ecosystem interacts with the Stellar blockchain. Your work is high-impact, supporting all developers and all projects building on the Stellar blockchain. You will create new tools, improve the experience of using Stellar, implement critical performance optimisations to run at scale, and, as the network continues to evolve, design new architectures to support future challenges.

SDF has a robust engineering ladder, with clear growth paths for both individual contributors and managers.

In this role, you will: 

• Work on tech at the cutting edge of the intersection between blockchain and finance.
• Be involved with all aspects of the development process for platform projects - from vision to final implementation.
• Design new platform functionality with the corresponding APIs for external developers.
• Build and maintain web services to support the foundation’s mission.
• Identify patterns in developer needs and design new protocols and services to increase developer velocity across our entire ecosystem.
• Engage with our community of open source developers on projects that encompass many different frameworks, languages, and ideas.
• Collaborate with the team on code review and design, and contribute to best practices for all of engineering at SDF.
• Investigate and refactor performance bottlenecks in order to continue scaling our API services.
• Author detailed technical feature and protocol (RFC) specifications - we take design seriously, and we encourage everyone to be a part of our RFC processes.

You have: 

• 4 years of experience developing software on a team.
• Strong computer science fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, distributed systems, and information retrieval.
• Written server applications in languages such as Go, Python, Rust, C#, Java or C and are a language polyglot.
• Experience in supporting production web services at scale.
• Great communication skills and can advocate and lead technical discussions, especially during the design and code review process.
• A solid understanding of software design patterns, and how to build components that are reusable, extensible, and modular.
• Knowledge of existing frameworks and open source tools and are willing to build new frameworks when open ones do not exist.
• A passion for performance debugging and benchmarking.
• Enthusiasm about working on a small, growing team where you'll be given a lot of autonomy.
• Openness, empathy, and care about putting the best ideas forward in a collaborative and helpful manner.

Bonus points if: 

• You have a BS or MS in Computer Science or equivalent field.
• You have a strong curiosity in blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies, and understand the fundamentals of these systems.