Senior Systems Software Engineer

About the role

We're seeking a Senior Systems Software Engineer to take on the toughest challenges in distributed, high-performance computing. You'll be responsible for designing and building key parts of a base-layer blockchain, focused on juicing every last ounce of performance from commodity hardware. As a member of our fast-paced team, you'll work across the entire modern blockchain stack, including cryptography, consensus, distributed systems, and core kernels.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement system-level components for blockchain infrastructure using C, C++, and Rust.
• Maintain strong emphasis on computer systems analysis and implementation.
• Gather requirements for high-throughput, low-latency (≤ 200 ms p95) services; design distributed systems that meet 99.9 % availability SLAs.
• Perform benchmarking and performance profiling to enhance execution efficiency.
• Specify, version, and maintain public and internal APIs plus JSON-RPC/gRPC endpoints.
• Document interfaces and generate strongly typed client libraries.
• Collaborate on the development of secure, low-latency networking protocols and cryptographic primitives. Build fault-tolerant ETL pipelines that transform on-chain events into query optimized relational & NoSQL stores.
• Tune indexes for millisecond reads.
• Provision and scale commodity server fleets (on-prem & cloud).
• Automate with Terraform/Kubernetes, monitor health, capacity, and SLOs. Migrate legacy computing pipelines to modern CI/CD frameworks.
• Support the design of fault-tolerant systems with advanced debugging, logging, and error recovery functionality.
• Model token- economic incentives, auction fee markets, and validator/operator behaviors; prototype algorithms and run agent-based simulations.
• Leverage generative-AI coding agents, static analyzers, and self-healing runbooks to accelerate delivery and cut MTTR.
• Review performance metrics to refine software components for memory and process or efficiency.
• Profile CPU, I/O, and network paths; execute load-tests; instrument metrics/tracing/logs; drive post-mortems and capacity plans.
• Maintain and manage a performant suite of APIs, SDKs, and developer tools for consumption by external developers.
• Integrate cryptographic primitives, secure key management, vulnerability scanning, and incident response playbooks.
• Write RFCs, lead design reviews, mentor junior engineers, and coordinate cross-functional delivery with product, infra, and legal teams.
• 100% telecommuting/working from home permitted from various and unanticipated locations throughout the U.S.

Requirements

• This position requires a Master's degree, or foreign equivalent, in Economics, Business Economics, Computer Science, or a related field.
• 10 years of experience as a Systems Engineer, Software Engineer, Software Developer, Information Technology Officer, or a related occupation
• Additionally, the applicant must have employment experience with:
• Systems programming in C, C++, and Rust;
• Low-level performance optimization and hardware interfacing;
• Distributed systems and threading runtimes;
• CI/CD pipeline design using GitHub Actions and on-prem infrastructure;
• Work with multiple systems, including web development platforms, high-performance computing systems, core operating system kernels, developer tools, and systems related to economic applications;
• Develop distributed ledger technologies or crypto economic distributed systems.
• Why join us?
• Be at the forefront of blockchain technology, working on next-generation performance optimization, on a small, fast-moving, tight-knit team
• Work with a team of experts with deep expertise in high-frequency trading and scaling developer ecosystems
• Shape the architecture of a system designed to process millions of transactions per second
• Access to cutting-edge hardware and development tools
• Compensation and Benefits
• Competitive salary ($213,512 - $220,000 USD)
• Significant equity and upside potential
• Flexible work environment
• Unlimited vacation policy
• Health insurance
• Hardware and development tool allowance
• Conference and learning budget
• Requisition ID: 245

Benefits

Additional Information

About Unto Labs Unto Labs is a team of low-level engineers pushing distributed systems to the physical limits of modern hardware. We're reimagining blockchains, from core consensus primitives to performance-tuned networking stacks, in the service of global scale applications.

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