Staff Backend Engineer (Rust)
CoW DAO is a research organization focused on MEV-related topics. They are a team of researchers and engineers aiming to build a more fair and efficient Ethereum.
Funding
About CoW DAO
CoW DAO is a research organization composed of researchers and engineers focused on MEV (Maximal Extractable Value). Their work centers on areas such as Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS), transaction ordering, and censorship resistance. The organization's stated goal is to contribute to building a more fair and efficient Ethereum.
Skills
About the Role
You'll take ownership of existing backend services and help shape the design and execution of future features and products. Your focus will be architecting and designing off-chain services, including the core auction protocol and the orderbook, so they can scale with rapidly changing requirements on an evolving blockchain. You'll write concurrent backend systems in Rust, while also interacting with Solidity smart contracts and deepening your understanding of auction mechanisms and DeFi protocols. You'll join the on-call rotation to help keep production systems reliable (this work is compensated separately), collaborate closely with researchers and the product team on challenging technical problems, deliver high-quality code from concept through production with strong monitoring, and give thoughtful code reviews on contributions to the open-source codebase.
Requirements
- 8+ years of production experience with systems-level programming languages
- 3+ years of hands-on production experience using Rust
- Practical experience working in web3, ideally in DeFi and the Ethereum ecosystem
- Excellent computer science, programming, and algorithmic skills
- Experience operating, maintaining, and architecting complex software systems
- Care about quality, readability, observability, and testability of code
- Proactively provide technical direction to improve performance and refactor codebase
- Strong communication and collaboration skills within a remote-first team
- Experience collaborating on a large, open-source codebase
- Ideally senior enough to mentor colleagues and provide direction
- Excited to explore and gain experience with Ethereum
Responsibilities
- Architect and design off-chain services including the core auction protocol and orderbook
- Write concurrent backend systems in Rust
- Interact with Smart Contracts written in Solidity and develop understanding of auction mechanisms and DeFi protocols
- Participate in on-call rotation to ensure production system reliability
- Work closely with researchers and the product team to ship features
- Deliver high-quality code from concept until production including monitoring
- Give in-depth code reviews of colleagues' contributions to the open-source codebase
Benefits
- Flexible work environment: hub in Lisbon or remote
- Token plan
- Periodic gatherings and team trips
- Conference allocation
- Learning budget
- Hardware budget
- Flexible work and vacation times
- Flat hierarchies