Senior Protocol Engineer

At o1Labs, our mission is to catalyze a new generation of applications powered by zero-knowledge cryptography. We are looking for a talented and motivated senior Protocol engineer specializing in Rust, to join the Rust Node Engineering team, with strong potential to grow into a technical leadership role. This is a chance to join a small, collaborative team and have a ton of independence while working on fascinating, inter-disciplinary problems at the heart of Mina Protocol.

The Role

You'll be a core contributor to Mina's Rust Node implementation, building and maintaining the critical infrastructure that powers the world's lightest blockchain. Your mission is to ensure Mina Rust Nodes are performant, reliable, and capable of scaling while maintaining our commitment to keeping the blockchain size constant and enabling broad participation.

You Will:

• Build & maintain core node functionality. Develop and optimize critical components of the Mina Rust Node implementation, including networking, consensus, transaction processing, and blockchain state management.
• Architect scalable systems. Design and implement robust, high-performance systems that can handle increasing network load while maintaining Mina's unique properties as a succinct blockchain.
• Drive consensus protocol improvements. Work on cutting-edge consensus mechanisms, block production, and validation systems that leverage zero-knowledge proofs for unprecedented efficiency.
• Optimize performance. Profile, benchmark, and optimize node performance across different deployment scenarios, from resource-constrained environments to high-throughput validators.
• Enhance network protocols. Improve peer-to-peer networking, gossip protocols, and data synchronization to ensure robust network health and fast propagation.
• Shape technical direction. As you grow into a technical leadership role, guide architectural decisions, mentor team members, and drive consensus on complex technical challenges.
• Collaborate across teams. Work closely with OCaml Node and SDK teams to ensure seamless integration of new features and protocol upgrades.

About You

• Seasoned Rust engineer who writes idiomatic, safe, and performant code with strong understanding of ownership, lifetimes, and concurrent programming patterns.
• Systems programming expertise. Deep understanding of low-level systems concepts including networking, concurrency, memory management, and performance optimization.
• Distributed systems experience.  Comfortable building resilient distributed systems with proper handling of consensus, fault tolerance, and network partitions.
• Blockchain/consensus knowledge.  Understanding of blockchain fundamentals, consensus algorithms, and peer-to-peer networking protocols.
• Performance-focused. Experience with profiling, benchmarking, and optimizing high-performance systems for throughput and latency.
• Leadership potential. Natural inclination to mentor others, drive technical discussions, and take ownership of complex architectural decisions.

 

This role offers significant growth potential into technical leadership as you develop expertise in our protocol and demonstrate leadership capabilities. We're looking for someone who can contribute immediately as a senior engineer while building toward becoming a technical leader within the Rust Node Engineering team.

Bonus Points

• Cryptography background. Understanding of zero-knowledge proofs, elliptic curve cryptography, or other cryptographic primitives.
• OCaml experience. Familiarity with functional programming and OCaml, as parts of our codebase leverage OCaml for protocol logic.
• DevOps/Infrastructure. Experience with containerization, orchestration, monitoring, and deployment of distributed systems.
• Open source contributions. Active participation in blockchain, Rust, or systems programming open source projects.
• Protocol research. Interest in or experience with consensus algorithm research, blockchain scaling solutions, or cryptographic protocol design.

Signals we love to see

• GitHub repos showcasing Rust systems programming, blockchain implementations, or distributed systems projects.
• Contributions to Rust ecosystem, blockchain projects, or other infrastructure-focused open source work.
• Technical leadership experience - evidence of guiding technical decisions, mentoring engineers, or driving complex projects to completion.
• Performance optimization examples - demonstrable experience improving system performance through profiling, algorithm optimization, or architectural improvements.

We have experienced veterans in these areas, and are more interested in hearing about your particular background than specifying a required set of skills. The ideal candidate is passionate about systems programming in Rust, excited about zero-knowledge technology, and ready to grow into technical leadership within a collaborative environment.

About us

o1Labs is the team that incubated, launched and contributes to Mina Protocol, a Layer 1 blockchain that compresses the blockchain from hundreds of gigabytes down to the size of a few tweets and can scale to millions of users while remaining decentralized enough for cell phones to be fully verifying nodes. Using the power of Mina and zk technology we are at the forefront of building a privacy centered Web 3.0.

With this work we are driving the potential to reimagine social structures. We believe in and are dedicated to incorporating diverse perspectives from conception through realization.