Staff Software Engineer, C++/Rust

As a Staff Software Engineer at the Stellar Development Foundation, you will design, build, and implement changes to Stellar Core, the primary distributed system that maintains Stellar's ledger and obtains global consensus. You'll work on a wide variety of problems focused on growing and scaling the global Stellar network, including designing features that increase performance, decentralization, and proper incentive mechanics for network participants. You'll engage with formal models, verification, simulation, and typical scalability problems in distributed and multi-core systems.

What you'll do

• Design and build key components of Stellar Core, the backbone software behind the Stellar Network
• Design and develop robust, scalable, and extensible technologies that empower developers and network participants
• Collaborate on new architectures and subsystems, working alongside the CTO, engineers, and the open source community
• Write clean, maintainable code with an emphasis on edge case analysis and future-proofing the work
• Own core subsystems of Stellar Core and help the team hit critical product milestones
• Collaborate with the team on code review and design, and contribute to best practices for engineering at SDF
• Investigate and refactor performance bottlenecks to continue scaling the system
• Author detailed technical feature and protocol (RFC) specifications and participate in the RFC process

What you bring

• 8+ years of experience developing software on a team
• A BS or MS in Computer Science or equivalent field
• Excellence in writing code in modern C++ or Rust in a production environment
• Strong communication skills to advocate and lead technical discussions, especially during design and code review
• A solid understanding of software design patterns and how to build components that are reusable, extensible, and modular
• Knowledge of best practices and development tools, and a passion for technological innovation
• A passion for performance debugging and benchmarking
• Enthusiasm for challenging work in an ever-evolving space where many problems are being faced for the first time
• Eagerness to work on a small, growing team where you'll have significant autonomy
• An open, empathetic approach and a commitment to putting the best ideas forward in a collaborative manner

Nice to have

• Direct experience designing and implementing distributed systems
• A strong curiosity about blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies, and an understanding of their fundamentals

What we offer

• Competitive base salary of $190,000-$300,000 depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and location, plus lumen-denominated grants
• Competitive health, dental and vision coverage with most plans covered at 100% for the employee and any dependents
• Flexible time off plus 15 company holidays including a company-wide holiday break
• Up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave for both non-birthing and birthing parents, and up to 14 weeks of paid pregnancy leave for birthing parents
• Gym reimbursement of $80 per month
• Life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance (up to $50k)
• Short and long-term disability
• 401k with 4% match
• Health and dependent care FSA accounts
• Commuter benefits with $250 per month employer contribution
• Health Savings Account (HSA) with monthly employer contribution
• Family building benefits through Kindbody
• Wellbeing benefits including One Medical, Rightway, and Headspace
• Learning and development budget of $1,500 per year
• Daily lunch and snacks in office
• Company retreats
• Hybrid work arrangement

About Stellar Development Foundation

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) is a non-profit organization supporting the continued development of Stellar, an open-source blockchain network focused on creating equitable access to the global financial system. SDF provides grants, investments, and tooling to help builders and organizations worldwide issue assets and transfer currencies in real time.