Ecosystem Development Lead

The Open Source Team at OpenZeppelin drives the development and adoption of the company’s open-source tools and libraries, which are foundational to building secure and scalable onchain applications. The team focuses on creating innovative developer products, fostering partnerships with blockchain ecosystems, and enabling the growth of Web3 technology through public goods.

This team is cross-functional including product, sales and developer relations. Future plans include scaling the team to support new ecosystems, refining our open-source strategy, and driving adoption of products that align with institutional and ecosystem demands.

What you'll be doing

As OpenZeppelin's Ecosystem Development Lead, you'll be responsible for generating business development specifically targeted at open-source public goods funding and web3 network grants. This includes applying to grant programs that are relevant to our open-source libraries and tools, identifying web3 protocols relevant to our security product and service offerings and identifying other partnership opportunities. You'll be working as part of the Open Source Team alongside our sales team and business development lead. You are expected to be technical enough to understand Ethereum development terminology and engage with web3 communities through in-person events, forums and other outreach methods.

• Supporting business development efforts across the Global Crypto Landscape, with a focus on developing and writing grants and proposals.

• Develop presentations, analysis, and research-related efforts associated with the grants and proposals.

• Managing grant and Web3 relationships, bringing your knowledge/information resources on multiple Crypto projects including Ethereum, Polkadot, Solana, etc.

• Program managing grant applications and GTM, working closely with business development, product, and engineering teams.

• Building meaningful relationships with ecosystem and project grant managers, with the emphasis on regular contact, problem solving and funding management.

• Spotting strong connections to OpenZeppelins ecosystem and evangelizing the benefits of it.

You have

• 3+ years of experience in business development, grant application management, corporate development, and/or project management.

• Passion for web3 funding mechanics, business models, and DAOs.

• In-depth knowledge of how Web3 ventures grow and their idiosyncratic characteristics compared to non-Web3 start-ups.

• Understanding of how projects manage their crypto treasuries and associated grants.

• Strong attention to detail, highly organized.

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills – good English speaker.

• An established network within the blockchain ecosystem, knowing where to find the best founders and key contacts across different protocols.

• Demonstrated ability to think strategically and creatively while applying sound business judgment and quantitative analytics.

Nice to have

• 2+ years experience of software development. In particular, Solidity smart contracts coding and testing exposure according to business requirements.

• Knowledge of solidity and the ability to evaluate Ethereum-based protocols at a fundamental level.

• Previous experience managing L1 protocol grant programs.

• Ability to process and calculate large amounts of industry data.

• Ability to interpret and isolate key content points and chart the associated data.

• Confidently generate new ideas, ‘think outside the box,’ and communicate written and verbal insights/recommendations to internal teams and clients.

• Python, SQL and On-chain analytics (Nansen, Dune, etherscan) experience.

Logistics

Our interview process takes place on Zoom and tends to consist of the following stages:

• Recruiter call (30-45 minutes)

• Hiring Manager call (30 minutes)

• Team member interview (30 minutes)

• Leadership call (30 minutes)

• Paid work test (lasting up to 2 days)

• Reference checks

Please let us know if you require any accommodations for the interview process, and we’ll do our best to provide assistance.