Staff Distributed Systems Engineer (Metalayer)

We’re looking for an incredible software engineer to help us build the future of blockchain interoperability. You will contribute to the Metalayer, our new product that makes interop easy for our network of over 75 rollups and dapp developers who want to access users across them.

Your focus will be on designing and implementing the smart contracts and off-chain infrastructure that power cross-chain interactions. You'll tackle challenges like designing secure bridging mechanisms, implementing efficient proof verification, and creating developer-friendly interfaces for cross-chain applications. 

This is the ideal opportunity for an engineer who has experience building DeFi protocols, cross-chain bridges, or MEV infrastructure. If you're passionate about solving blockchain interoperability challenges and have a track record of building secure, decentralized systems, this could be perfect for you.

We’re backed by some of the best investors in the valley and offer competitive pay and equity, and full benefits.

Caldera enables dynamic, scalable blockchain experiences. Currently, dapps that are deployed to general-purpose blockchain compete with thousands of other applications for space on the network — this can lead to congestion and high fees or even network outages.

That’s where we come in. We’re building software that makes it easy for the most innovative blockchain applications to launch their own ultra-performant blockchains (rollups), enabling applications to own their ecosystem, scale to millions of users, and provide a superior user experience to their players.

We’re located in San Francisco and New York, and work in-person or remotely.

As a Staff Distributed Systems Engineer at Caldera, you will:

• Help architect the caldera Metalayer, a high-performance, stack-agnostic blockchain interop solution.

• Develop our reference relayer/solver using languages like Go, Rust, and Solidity.

• Write efficient and secure EVM smart contracts in solidity that are used both to operate the interop system and to be consumed by other developers.

• Drive the technical direction, establish roadmaps, communicate and collaborate with internal and external partners to help Caldera win.

• Have 5+ years of engineering experience, including at least 2 years of experience developing high-availability, distributed systems.

• Have a deep knowledge of Go, Rust or similar languages

• Have built complex Ethereum “dapps” with Solidity or Yul

• Are comfortable building systems that secure user’s funds

• Love writing fast, well-optimized, well-tested, clean code

• Are confident with performance optimization, identifying bottlenecks and scalability concerns.

• Have implemented MEV/intents solvers

• Have implemented or used a consensus algorithm (eg. Paxos/Raft, pBFT, tendermint, ...) in the past

• Understand tradeoffs in the blockchain interop space and how advancements like ZK, preconfirmations, fast finality impact design considerations and differ.

• Have significant open-source contributions, especially in blockchain clients/node software, databases, networking, or programming languages/frameworks