Platform Architect at Blockstream (Menlo Park, CA)Platform Architect

Blockstream blockstream.com was founded in 2014 by Dr. Adam Back en.wikipedia.org/Adam_Back and a group of fellow cryptographers and engineers who are passionate about Bitcoin and its potential to change the world. Today, Blockstream is the leading Bitcoin company, providing cutting-edge infrastructure solutions for enterprises, institutions, and individual Bitcoin users. We develop industry-leading Bitcoin self-custody solutions, Bitcoin-based financial products, second-layer scaling technologies, and enterprise-grade blockchain infrastructure.

Blockstream is seeking a Platform Architect to define and evolve the architectural foundation of our core platforms. This role is responsible for end-to-end system design, ensuring scalability, reliability, security, and developer efficiency across Blockstream’s infrastructure and product ecosystem.

You will work closely with engineering, security, product, and leadership to design distributed systems that support high-value financial use cases, while upholding Bitcoin’s core principles of decentralization and trust minimization.

What You’ll Be Doing (Responsibilities):

• Own the architecture and technical vision for Blockstream’s platform and shared services
• Design scalable, secure, and fault-tolerant distributed systems supporting Bitcoin, Layer-2, and enterprise products
• Define platform standards for APIs, data models, service boundaries, and infrastructure patterns
• Partner with engineering teams to guide implementation, review designs, and resolve complex technical challenges
• Collaborate with Security and Infrastructure teams to ensure defense-in-depth, key management, and operational resilience
• Evaluate and introduce new technologies while balancing innovation with operational maturity
• Ensure platform designs support regulatory, enterprise, and institutional requirements without compromising decentralization principles
• Document architectural decisions, tradeoffs, and long-term technical roadmaps
• Mentor senior engineers and help raise the overall architectural rigor across teams

What We Look For in You (Required Qualifications):

• 5+ years of experience designing and operating large-scale platforms or infrastructure systems
• 6-8 years of development experience building production-grade backend with strong security boundaries, authentication, authorization, key management, as well as designing APIs, data models, and distributed services that run reliably at scale.
• Proven experience as a Platform Architect, Principal Engineer, or Senior Systems Architect
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, including consensus, fault tolerance, replication, and networking
• Strong experience with cloud and/or hybrid infrastructure (AWS, GCP, bare metal, Kubernetes, Terraform, etc.)
• Expertise in security-critical systems, including authentication, authorization, cryptography, and key management
• Experience designing high-availability systems for financial or mission-critical applications
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to diverse stakeholders
• Comfort working in a remote, globally distributed team

Nice to Have (Preferred Qualifications):

• Hands-on experience with Bitcoin, Lightning, Liquid, or blockchain infrastructure
• Experience contributing to open-source projects
• Familiarity with HSMs, secure enclaves, or hardware-backed key storage
• Background in fintech, capital markets, or institutional financial systems
• Experience balancing enterprise requirements with decentralized architectures

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