Bittensor Protocol Engineer

About Yuma 

Yuma invests in, builds, and scales infrastructure in the Bittensor ecosystem. Within Bittensor we are among the largest decentralized AI infrastructure providers, operate the largest investment fund, partner with large exchanges to provide asset services, and invest in and incubate other growing companies. We were founded in late 2024 and are continuously growing our business lines and product offerings. 

About the Role 

We’re looking for a Protocol Engineer focused on Bittensor Protocol development to join our engineering team at Yuma. You will work closely with the Yuma development team, as well as in collaboration with developers across the industry to construct proposals, implement new features, resolve critical issues, and ensure testing meets the high demands of the industry. 

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain Bittensor protocol and relevant subnet components.
• Author and implement protocol proposals with ecosystem contributors.
• Write clear, well-tested, and auditable protocol code.
• Build tests for protocol changes across simulation, testnet, and staging.
• Collaborate with our Validator team to understand issues and work towards implementing solutions.
• Analyze live network behavior and address incentive or reliability issues.
• Participate in protocol-focused code reviews and design discussions.
• Maintain technical documentation for protocol behavior and upgrades.

 

Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience. 

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience. 

• Experience with distributed systems or protocol-level software. 

• Proficiency in Rust. 

• Understanding of blockchain fundamentals, smart contracts and on-chain systems. 

• Experience deploying and operating production systems. 

• Strong testing discipline for complex or adversarial systems. 

• Familiarity with CI/CD and reproducible builds. 

• Ability to reason about incentives and failure modes. 

• Clear written and verbal technical communication. 

 

Nice to Have 

• Hands-on experience with Bittensor, subnets or validators. 

• Experience with Python, Object-Oriented Programming, Asynchronous communications. 

• Substrate or Rust-based blockchain experience. 

• Work on emissions, incentives, or governance systems. 

• Mainnet or testnet blockchain operations experience. 

• AI/ML systems exposure in decentralized settings. 

• Startup or early-stage company experience. 

Location: Stamford, CT 
In office: 3 days / month with flexibility for exceptional candidates