Senior/Staff Software Engineer - Low Latency C++

Monad Labs is a venture-backed tech startup building the Monad blockchain, a high-performance smart contract platform built to bring world adoption to decentralized apps. Monad combines unparalleled performance (10,000 transactions per second) with portability (full compatibility for Ethereum smart contracts), leveraging innovations in parallel execution and distributed consensus.

Founded by Jump Trading alums, our team solves challenging problems in distributed systems engineering and low-latency optimization, authoring novel open source code to implement a new, high-performance, high-reliability, high-value system.

After recently raising a $19 million seed round backed by Dragonfly Capital, Placeholder Capital, Naval Ravikant, and other leaders in the crypto space, we are hiring a few more exceptional engineers who want to work on challenging problems with massive impact in a fast-paced environment.

The Role

We are looking for strong software engineers with deep experience in low-level systems engineering and performance optimization.

You’ll use your knowledge of low-level systems behavior and higher-level system design to build an optimal stack-based virtual machine that supports multithreaded computation, as well as an efficient Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) algorithm for maintaining consistent state across a distributed network.

You’ll be part of a lean, focused team shipping a massively impactful system. You’ll design new features and identify optimizations that advance the system’s limits. We think that you'll find the work very challenging and rewarding. Experience with crypto is not expected.

Who you are

Requirements:

• You have a Computer Science degree, or equivalent experience
• You're an expert in C++ with excellent knowledge of lower-level details like memory management and multithreading
• You have strong experience in system design
• You have excellent instincts for software architecture
• You're resourceful and able to work fairly independently
• You value communication and collaboration
• You're interested in building high-value systems
• You’re excited about working in a startup, where you’ll wear many hats and handle uncertain requirements

Bonus:

• Experience with kernel development
• Experience with fault-tolerant distributed systems
• Experience with database development, compiler optimization, applied cryptography, or networking
• Contributions to open source projects
• Startup experience
• Interest in crypto

What you’ll be doing

• Designing and building a high-performance multithreaded stack-based VM, as well as ancillary functionality (disk I/O, computation metering, network)
• Designing and building a distributed system kept in sync by a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus mechanism
• Designing and building VM features that allow developers to build more powerful programs on the Monad platform
• Identifying bottlenecks through profiling, and evaluating design choices for accelerating computation flow
• Contributing to developer tooling
• Tech stack: C++, go, clang, LLVM, gdb, perf, unix, git

Why work with us

Working at Monad Labs means doing challenging work on a high-impact problem with exceptional teammates.

Here are some of the people you’ll work with:

• James, performance engineering expert and system architect; previously designed and built ultra-low-latency systems for a top high-frequency trading team at Jump Trading;
• Ariq, expert at low-level firmware and software programming; previously a senior engineer at Arista Networks, where he served as lead maintainer on multiple linux kernel networking drivers for Arista EOS devices;
• Aashish, expert systems designer and hacker, previously the first engineer at Pattern Research, a leading crypto HFT firm, where he designed and built the entire trading stack from scratch; graduated from MIT at age 19

Why work with us?

• You’ll work on extremely challenging problems with massive impact
• You’ll work with and learn from a small, exceptional team
• You’ll receive a competitive salary, along with equity
• You’ll shape the culture as an early employee and make impactful contributions from day one
• You’ll be part of a flat, results-driven organization
• Your work will be deeply impactful, enabling much cheaper and more efficient decentralized computation and ultimately paving the way for new dapps that improve many people’s lives.

We think you’ll enjoy working with us, and that you’ll find the work to be extremely impactful and challenging.

Salary and benefits

Minimum full-time salary of $200,000-$250,000. (**This is not a guarantee of compensation or salary; a final offer amount may vary based on factors including but not limited to experience and geographic location.)

Monad Labs’ benefits include unlimited and encouraged paid time off; 100% medical, dental, and vision coverage; home office equipment stipend; monthly wellness/fitness stipend; and 11 company-observed holidays.

The majority of our team is in NYC and works together a few days a week. We are open to remote candidates, with a preference for candidates based in NYC.