Compensation

Competitive

Contract type

Full time

Remote working

Technologies & frameworks

Cryptography
Computer Science
Applied Cryptography
Mathematics
Rust
homomorphic encryption
Research

Benefits & perks

Remote working
Flexible working
Team workouts
Conference tickets
Unlimited vacation
Travel opportunities

Blockchains are not private enough for safe use by citizens, corporations, or dissidents.

Role overview

About Heliax

The primary project of Heliax is the Anoma protocol (implemented in Rust). Anoma is a sovereign, proof-of-stake blockchain protocol that enables private, asset-agnostic cash and private bartering among any number of parties. In addition to Anoma, Heliax works on open-source projects which are part of the Anoma ecosystem, including but not limited to research in cryptographic libraries such as the MASP or Ferveo (written in Rust), and tools for high assurance validity predicates and arbitrary zero-knowledge circuits (Juvix, written in Haskell).

Heliax is a remote-first team, currently composed of cross-disciplinary members located around the world. All of our work is open-source. Our work culture is characterized by open-allocation, where team members have a high degree of freedom and autonomy in choosing when to work, what to work on, and whom to work with.

Overview

Blockchains are not private enough for safe use by citizens, corporations, or dissidents.

Heliax is looking for a research cryptographer interested in fully-homomorphic encryption protocols and their application to distributed ledger technology to work with us to design, evaluate, and implement FHE constructions, then put this cryptography into practice in order to realise privacy and scalability capabilities required by the next generation of blockchain networks.

This role offers the chance to work closely with a small team on compelling cross-disciplinary problems in theoretical computer science, cryptography, game theory, economics, and systems design, and enjoy a high degree of independence in working conditions and task prioritization.

Responsibilities

Evaluate and analyze existing FHE protocols for security, expressivity, and performance, monitor the state of the research field for compelling new theoretical advances, and conduct original exploratory research into new constructions
Update & alter existing protocols and implementations (such as nuFHE), customize them for specific proof-of-concept and production use-cases
Produce technical specifications for designs & instantiations of said protocols and assist with implementation in coordination with team members

Qualifications

Academic research background in mathematics, computer science, or cryptography
Prior experience with fully-homomorphic encryption in a research context
Self-motivated & self-organized

Bonus Qualifications

Experience with (fully) homomorphic encryption libraries (e.g. SEAL, HElib)
Prior experience in low-level systems programming, ideally in Rust
Prior experience with distributed ledger (blockchain) technology

Misc

Remote or local (Zürich/Zug, Berlin). When remote, preferred if mostly located within (+/- 7 hours) Central European time zones. North America is fine.

Ideally someone who enjoys travel, nature and hiking. Often we find that protocols are best designed not in a meeting room but rather on a trail 🏔️.

Heliax

10-49

Heliax is a research, development, and product company dedicated to bringing novel research to bear on the hardest problems in the distributed ledger space and making self-sovereign and privacy-preserving technologies accessible worldwide. Our Work Heliax is the core development team building the Anoma Network, a layer 1, proof-of-stake, blockchain protocol that deploys cutting edge research in zero-knowledge cryptography and distributed systems design to enable private, asset-agnostic cash, bartering among any number of parties, and coordination mechanisms at large scale. Our Research Heliax's R&D team distills novel research across many disciplines, such as zero-knowledge cryptography, programming language theory, and computer science with the aim of building open-source tools that contribute to solving the bottlenecks in the blockchain industry. Some of our past projects include: Juvix, a dependently-typed high-level language for developing smart contracts, which is platform agnostic and able to output efficiently executable code. MASP, a zero-knowledge cryptographic scheme implemented in Rust that enables multi-denomination privacy sets Our Culture Heliax is a remote-first company with +20 team members located around the world. Our culture is defined by the following principles: Shaping the industry: join the vanguard of the emerging blockchain industry and work on problems that have never been solved before and on building systems and products that were not possible before. Remote first: from Canada, United States, Brazil, the UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Taiwan, Japan– work from whenever you want. Open allocation: high degree of autonomy and flexibility. Team gatherings: from company-wide to team-specific gatherings to research and industry conferences.

Typed Functional Programming

Early Stage Venture

Blockchain