Staff Engineer, Comet (Tech Lead)

We are joining the Interchain Foundation, and are rebranding Skip to Interchain Inc., as we become the ICF’s main development, product, and growth subsidiary! Read the announcement to learn more.

Who we are

📌 Interchain Inc (formerly, Skip) leads development for the Cosmos Hub, ecosystem, and stack -- the leading platform for building sovereign, interoperable blockchains. We're dedicated to offering developers full-stack programmability, complete ownership of their economics, and best-in-class distribution to users everywhere.

Our mission is to build a more free, more fair internet with the Cosmos platform at the core. The best teams already build with Cosmos across every category: defi (dYdX, Osmosis, Injective), infrastructure (Babylon, Celestia, Initia),  Depin/AI (Akash, Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, Allora), privacy (Nillion, Penumbra), and many more. We want to help these teams and many more help bring the values of sovereignty and decentralization to the rest of the internet by developing the Cosmos stack and hub. 

We focus on hiring the core team and senior talent to work together in person in NYC to build a collaborative and supportive culture. But we’re still open to hiring best-in-class remote talent anywhere within 6 hours of the NYC timezone.

Interchain Inc is committed to inclusion.

Interchain Inc. is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace and strongly encourages individuals from underrepresented backgrounds to apply. We believe the purpose of crypto is to expand who has agency in society, which starts at home, by empowering people with diverse gender identities, ethnic backgrounds, and life experiences within our own organization. Interchain Inc. offers dedicated mentorship to support personal growth and a bright career in crypto.

Core team member responsibilities

1. Work to solve hard technical problems at the cutting edge of blockchain research alongside the founders.
2. Be empowered to make bold technical and strategic decisions.
3. Play a critical role in determining the people we hire, our culture, our engineering practices, and the products we ship.

How we work

1. We value ambition, work ethic, and m (slope) over prestige, accomplishments, and y-intercept.
2. We value thoughtful and contentious dialogue over siloed and unilateral decision-making.
3. We value acknowledging uncertainty/weakness and seeking support over unabated confidence and solo performances.
4. We’re obsessive about documenting everything, learning, and shipping as fast as possible with short feedback cycles. 

Benefits

✈️ 18 days of paid leave

🧑‍⚕️ Premium health insurance

🏦 Competitive regional compensation and token compensation

📁 Office space and accommodations for remote work

👉 We’re open to arranging paid work trials with potential hires because we think interviews give a very limited view of candidates and the company.

Description We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to lead the development and optimization of CometBFT, the leading BFT consensus engine powering the Cosmos ecosystem.

The ideal candidate has expertise in distributed systems and consensus algorithms, with a proven ability to design scalable, high-performance systems. They are a strong technical leader who thrives on solving complex problems and guiding teams to deliver high-quality software. Someone who doesn’t enjoy building in public and interacting with their users won’t excel in this role. 

Role

• Lead the architecture, design, and development of core components in CometBFT 
• Troubleshoot and resolve critical issues in distributed systems with team members and customers
• Review and improve code contributions to establish and enforce engineering excellence across the codebase
• Mentor and support engineers to grow their technical expertise.

Qualifications

• Requirements:

• • 8+ years of software engineering experience.
  • Proven track record of leading technical projects and teams.
  • Proficiency in Go or similar languages.
  • Experience delivering reliable, production-grade systems at scale.
  • Expertise in distributed systems algorithms.

• Bonus:

• • Familiarity with best practices for governance, decision making, and development in open source software
  • Expertise in consensus algorithms or similar distributed systems research topics