Commonware

Engineer at Commonware (United States)

Commonware· United States· $250k·

Role details

Salary
$250k
Work type
Remote
Employment
Full-Time

Job description

WHAT IS COMMONWARE?

Today’s blockchain stack is designed to be a jack of all trades, but master of none. Modeled after virtual machines (VM) and kernels, it exposes a monolithic interface through a one-size-fits-all framework instead of molding to the needs of any specific application.

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At Commonware, we believe that the most popular onchain experiences of the next decade will develop a sustained edge through vertical integration. To accelerate developers that share this perspective, we are building a library of open (MIT/Apache-2) primitives github.com/monorepo meant to be remixed and modded.

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SETTING THE STAGE: 8 PEOPLE AND $30M+ RAISED

Backed by Haun Ventures, Dragonfly Capital, Mert Mumtaz, Nick White, Dan Romero, Sreeram Kannan, and other experienced operators commonware.xyz Commonware is now hiring for ambitious engineers that can help us expand the Commonware Library github.com/monorepo to a broader set of applications and support customers, like Tempo fortune.com/, with novel infrastructure built for it.

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Today, we are a lean team of 8 focused on staying small, nimble, and accountable: Patrick O’Grady patrickogrady.xyz (Founder, ex-VP Engineering at Ava Labs, designed Coinbase Rosetta/Mesh), Brendan Chou linkedin.com/brendanchou (First Hire and Head of Engineering at dYdX), Roberto Bayardo linkedin.com (Distinguished Engineer at Google and Coinbase), Dan Laine linkedin.com/daniel-laine (Engineer at Ava Labs), Lucas Meier cronokirby.com (Cryptographer at Penumbra Labs), Ben Clabby x.com/vex_0x (Engineer at Optimism), André Silva x.com/andrebeat (Consensus at Parity), Andrew Lewis-Pye lewis-pye.com (Researcher at LSE). We are spread around the globe but assemble at our new office in Palo Alto every few months to fill whiteboards and play arcade games.

THE ROLE

We don't hire engineers for specific tasks. We hire great people with differentiated experience in a specific area and expect them to direct their focus to the highest priority task.

At this time, we are looking for folks that have spent years building any of the following:

  • Streaming unstructured data over globally distributed infrastructure
  • Designing and testing onchain execution environments
  • Optimizing cryptographic primitives (with math and assembly)
  • Pushing the performance of embedded databases to the limit
  • Crafting intuitive experiences for users to explore fast blockchains

IDEAL CANDIDATE

We consider each candidate on a case-by-case basis and don't have a minimum set of requirements any individual must satisfy (other than being based in the United States).

That being said, we've found the following to be a good predictor of fit:

  • You excelled as a programmer, went on to lead a productive engineering organization, but ultimately yearn to build things.
  • You maintained a large open-source codebase (especially in Rust).
  • You shop at IKEA because you enjoy building your own furniture.
  • You understand the difference between writing code and writing the right code.
  • You dive into rabbit holes rather than running from them.
  • Your humor is xkcd-forward.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

Commonware, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.

We comply with all applicable federal, state, and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.

Why work at Commonware

  • Founding Engineer Opportunity: Commonware is looking for a small group of founding engineers (1-10% equity), offering a rare opportunity to shape the core technology and culture from the ground up.
  • Engineering Culture: Focus on building performant distributed systems in Rust, with a strong emphasis on deterministic simulation testing, high code coverage (>90% for consensus primitives), and rigorous engineering practices.
  • Remote/Hybrid Policy: Not publicly specified, but the team appears to be distributed and remote-friendly based on the nature of the company.
  • Notable Perks: Opportunity to work on cutting-edge blockchain infrastructure, contribute to open-source software, and collaborate with a team backed by top-tier crypto venture capital firms (Haun Ventures, Dragonfly Capital).

Application questions