Backend Engineer - Protocol Platform

Skills

About the Role

You will build the services, APIs, data systems, and integrations that power Compound's application layer and operational infrastructure. Working at the boundary between decentralized protocols and traditional software systems, you'll turn blockchain data into easy-to-use product experiences, enable integrations with wallets and financial partners, and build secure infrastructure for teams and users operating in a high-stakes financial environment. This role offers meaningful ownership over production systems at the intersection of DeFi, financial infrastructure, and developer platforms.

Requirements

• 4+ years of professional backend software engineering experience building production services, APIs, data systems, developer platforms, or financial infrastructure
• Strong experience in one or more modern backend languages (Go, Python, TypeScript, Rust)
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, API design, asynchronous processing, event-driven architecture, databases, caching, queues, data consistency, and service reliability
• Experience designing and operating cloud-based production systems, including containerized services, managed databases, networking, observability, and deployment pipelines
• Strong security mindset, including authentication, authorization, secrets handling, least-privilege access controls, audit logging, and secure third-party integrations
• Demonstrated ability to own projects from system design through production deployment, monitoring, incident response, and iterative improvement
• Excellent engineering judgment, written communication, and ability to work across technical and non-technical teams
• Comfort operating in a fast-moving environment with high ownership, evolving requirements, and ambitious technical goals
• Demonstrated ability to effectively leverage AI-assisted development tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) to accelerate software development, debugging, testing, documentation, and code reviews
• Experience building backend systems for DeFi protocols, fintech platforms, exchanges, custodians, wallets, payment infrastructure, or other financial services
• Working knowledge of EVM transaction flows, RPC providers, event logs, contract reads, ABI-based integrations, and confirmations, finality, and chain reorganizations
• Familiarity with blockchain data and infrastructure providers such as Alchemy, Infura, QuickNode, The Graph, Goldsky, Subsquid, or Dune
• Experience building robust blockchain or financial-data pipelines, including reconciliation, idempotency, replay and backfill handling, chain-reorganization handling, and event-sourcing patterns
• Experience building or operating globally distributed backend services, including API gateways, RPC proxies, caching layers, edge infrastructure, and authentication
• Familiarity with Solidity and smart-contract architecture
• Experience with custody or permissioned-access systems
• Experience supporting external developers and partners through APIs, SDKs, webhooks, documentation, developer tooling, or partner-facing integration workflows
• An active interest in crypto, DeFi, financial markets, or open financial infrastructure

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate scalable, secure backend services and APIs across applications, internal tooling, and partner integrations
• Build reliable systems for indexing, processing, reconciling, and serving on-chain data across EVM and non-EVM networks
• Design for blockchain-specific failure modes such as chain reorganizations, confirmation and finality assumptions, delayed indexing, failed transactions, RPC inconsistencies, and idempotency
• Partner with protocol engineers to define and maintain contract interfaces, transaction workflows, event schemas, configuration-change processes, and release procedures
• Develop backend services, APIs, and data models for account positions, portfolio views, transaction history, protocol analytics, risk monitoring, notifications, and operational reporting
• Own integrations with external infrastructure and financial partners including wallet infrastructure, custodians, RPC providers, indexers, data platforms, and identity or access providers
• Build secure service-to-service architecture, authentication and authorization systems, secrets management, audit logging, and access-control controls
• Improve system reliability through observability, monitoring, alerting, incident response procedures, and operational tooling
• Participate in architecture reviews, code reviews, and technical planning
• Collaborate with protocol engineering, product, design, risk, and operations teams
• Build offchain technical foundations to scale across new products, integrations, markets, and institutional use cases
• Own backend readiness for protocol upgrades, including interface changes, event and data migrations, historical backfills, reconciliation, monitoring, and coordinated rollout plans