Senior Software Engineer at Category Labs

<p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Category Labs</strong> (formerly known as Monad Labs) is a team of systems engineers and researchers on a mission to design and build at the frontier of decentralized technology. We strive to deliver significant improvements over existing blockchain solutions. After raising $225M in series A funding, led by Paradigm, we are growing our team.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em">We’re the team behind Monad, a high-performance, EVM-compatible Layer 1 whose public mainnet is now live. We write the core software that runs it: a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://github.com/category-labs/monad"><u>parallel-execution EVM</u></a>, a custom state database, and a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://github.com/category-labs/monad-bft"><u>BFT consensus client</u></a>, all developed in the open.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h2><strong>The Role</strong></h2><p style="min-height:1.5em">We’re hiring a Senior Software Engineer to research, design, and build core improvements to the Monad protocol. Your work will involve distributed algorithms, cryptography, and consensus mechanisms. You’ll draw on previous experience in distributed systems or blockchain engineering, and work as a vital member of a small, high-performing team.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h2><strong>What You’ll Do</strong></h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Design and implement core improvements to the consensus mechanism, gossip protocol, state synchronization algorithm, leader election protocol, etc.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Devise experiments to test worst-case scenarios, and iterate on your design based on the results.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Design components while taking into account the behavior of other blockchain systems such as rollups, bridges, or staking systems.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Build performant system components from scratch in C++ or Rust.</p></li></ul><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h2><strong>Who You Are</strong></h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">You have at least 5 years of software engineering experience in Rust, C++, or C.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">You have significant experience building performant systems from scratch, such as databases, device drivers, or embedded systems.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">You have excellent instincts for software architecture, memory management, and performance optimization and profiling tools.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">You hold a Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science, or have equivalent experience.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">You value communication and collaboration.</p></li></ul><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h2><strong>Why Work with Us</strong></h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Challenging problems: </strong>You’ll wor