Protocol Engineer

Protocol Engineer – Hiring Fast!

Industry: Finance

Location: Iselin, NJ

Pay Rate: $70-80/HR on W2 Only – NO C2C

Setting: Hybrid Required (Remote is NOT an Option) Duration: 12+ months

Job ID: 246900

Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years of Specialty Software Engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work experience, training, military experience, education
• 3+ years of experience in backend or systems programming, with expert-level proficiency in Go (Golang)
• 6+ months of experience with Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)
• 1+ year of experience with BFT consensus algorithms, P2P networking, and state replication; reliable, distributed systems experience.

Desired Qualifications:

• Blockchain Core: Deep experience with Cosmos SDK and CometBFT. Comfort building custom modules and modifying consensus logic, not just deploying smart contracts
• Pedersen Commitments (Homomorphic encryption properties)
• Zero-Knowledge Proofs (specifically Bulletproofs or Sigma protocols)
• Math-to-Code: Demonstrated ability to read academic whitepapers/preprints and translate mathematical specifications into functioning code
• Experience with MPC (Multi-Party Computation) or Verifiable Secret Sharing (VSS) schemes
• Familiarity with the Ristretto255 curve or libraries like gnark-crypto
• Background in FinTech, payment systems, or high-frequency trading platforms
• Understanding of the Account Model vs. UTXO Model trade-offs in privacy-preserving ledgers.

Responsibilities:

• Core Protocol Development: Architect and build a custom blockchain application using Go, Cosmos SDK, and CometBFT (Tendermint)
• Cryptographic Implementation: Implement and optimize privacy-preserving primitives, specifically Pedersen
• Commitments and Bulletproofs (Range Proofs), ensuring no trusted setup is required
• Consensus Customization: Engineer custom ABCI++ extensions (specifically PrepareProposal and Vote Extensions) to implement an on-chain Multi-Party Computation (MPC) mixing network
• State Machine Design: Design a custom KVStore state machine that manages homomorphic encrypted balances (Elliptic Curve points) instead of plaintext integers
• Performance Engineering: Optimize cryptographic operations (scalar multiplication, point addition) for low latency and high throughput in a distributed environment
• Auditing Infrastructure: Build secure off-chain query layers and "view key" mechanisms that allow for granular, permissioned regulatory auditing.