Blockchain Security Researcher

As a Blockchain Security Researcher at OpenZeppelin, you conduct smart contract audits and security research for the world's leading web3 protocols and top financial institutions. You work across the full lifecycle of protocols: from architecture review before code is written, through pre-launch audits, to continuous coverage of production systems. Your research directly protects $35 trillion in onchain value.

What you'll do

• Review smart contracts for top decentralized applications, blockchain infrastructure, and financial institutions before launch, identifying vulnerabilities, prioritizing them, and presenting findings to clients.
• Drive audits independently from start to finish, using AI as your primary collaborator and partnering with other researchers when useful to pressure-test findings.
• Partner with client teams during the design phase of new protocols, analyzing architecture, trust assumptions, and operational constraints before code is written through Design Reviews and Applied Research engagements.
• Use AI efficiently throughout the audit process and build skills, agents, and workflows that compound across the team.
• Conduct open-ended research into cutting-edge blockchain technologies, vulnerability classes, and emerging attack vectors, contributing findings back to OpenZeppelin's knowledge base and the broader ecosystem.

What you bring

• Hands-on and practical experience in software development, cybersecurity, applied mathematics, distributed systems, cryptography, cryptoeconomics, game theory, or DeFi mechanisms.
• Experience designing and developing smart contracts, not only auditing them.
• Strong working knowledge of Solidity and the broader Ethereum/EVM ecosystem, including common libraries, frameworks, and smart contract patterns.
• Daily use of modern AI tooling as central to your work, using it to expand audit coverage, reason about complex systems, and produce high-quality outputs faster, and evaluating AI-generated code with a critical eye.
• Comfort building and extending your own tooling such as skills, agents, prompts, scripts, or full workflows that the rest of the team can adopt and build on.
• Advanced English level and strong communication skills, both oral and written.

Nice to have

• Experience with non-EVM ecosystems and languages, such as Canton, Move (Sui, Aptos), Golang (Cosmos SDK), Cairo (Starknet), Rust-based blockchains (Solana, Stellar), or ZK circuits and cryptography-heavy systems.
• Experience with risk assessment work in the crypto industry, including smart contract risk assessment and threat modeling.
• Working hand-in-hand with protocol teams on co-creative engagements, helping design, specify, and implement smart contracts alongside the research.
• Web2 security expertise such as penetration testing, web application security, infrastructure security, or appsec.
• Experience with formal verification, invariant testing, or advanced fuzzing tools such as Echidna, Foundry, Halmos, or Certora.
• A track record in audit contests such as Code4rena, Sherlock, or Cantina, or bug bounty platforms such as Immunefi or HackerOne.
• Public security research output, such as published findings, blog posts, conference talks, or contributions to open-source security tooling.

What we offer

• Company gatherings around the world to meet teammates
• Fully remote work with flexible time off
• 8 weeks of paid leave for primary caregivers, 4 weeks for secondary caregivers, and a one-time $3,600 baby bonus
• Up to $500 in home office equipment support
• Medical insurance
• Learning and development opportunities
• Monthly stipend for your preferred co-working space

About OpenZeppelin

OpenZeppelin is the security standard for onchain finance. Founded in 2015, the company combines AI-native security tooling with deep research and a decade of audit expertise to support leading institutions and crypto-native teams. OpenZeppelin's open-source Contract Libraries have facilitated over $35 trillion in onchain value and are used by 10 of the top 10 tokenized money market funds and 9 of the top 10 stablecoins by market cap.