Lead Protocol Engineer, Ondo Chain

About the Company

Hi, we're Ondo Finance. Our mission is to provide institutional-grade, blockchain-enabled investment products and services. We have both a technology arm that develops decentralized finance technology, and an asset management arm that creates and manages tokenized funds. We were the first company to tokenize exposure to US Treasuries, and have since expanded into several other assets. We are also focused on incubating protocols that can support both tokenized real-world assets and traditional crypto.

Founded by folks from Goldman Sachs Digital Assets Team, we’re backed by some of the best investors in the world including Founders Fund, Coinbase Ventures, Pantera Capital, Tiger Global, and more. We are currently the leaders in the space in terms of AUM and are well capitalized to continue growing the firm. We're fully remote, with team members across the U.S.

About the Role

As a Blockchain Engineer at Ondo, you will be instrumental in architecting a secure, scalable platform designed to support a wide range of decentralized applications, including those focused on Real World Asset (RWA) tokenization: Ondo Chain.

This position is a rare opportunity to shape the future of traditional and decentralized finance by building a platform at the forefront of both technical innovation and real-world asset adoption.

Responsibilities

• Lead Platform Development: Architect, build, and scale a secure RWA blockchain platform, ensuring it meets performance, security, and functionality requirements

• Oversee Infrastructure, Optimization, and Upgrades: Continuously improve the performance and feature set of the platform to meet usage requirements and market demands

• Smart Contract and Protocol Development: Drive the development of smart contracts and protocols, ensuring seamless EVM integration and support for novel use cases

• Technical Leadership: Serve as a tech lead for protocol projects, guiding the engineering team in delivering high-impact, scalable solutions while making sound technical decisions that align with long-term goals

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience

• Minimum of 2+ years of professional software engineering experience working in web3. Prior experience from a layer one blockchain or DeFi protocol strongly preferred.

• Based in PT, MT, CT, or ET time zones

• Proven results in building and scaling blockchain platforms

• Experience with smart contract development, blockchain protocols, and blockchain virtual machines

• Expertise with the Cosmos SDK and ecosystem tools

• Strong expertise with Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus protocols (e.g. Tendermint)

• You are a proven tech lead with experience planning and leading large projects with long-term impact on a single system or team

• Strong technical grasp and excellent judgment on task prioritization

• Strong emphasis on understanding the “why” behind requirements and commitment defining the “minimum scope”.

• Excellent technical and non-technical communication skills, verbal and written

What we offer:

• Competitive compensation including salary, future token rights, and/or equity (according to your preferences) — we're well-funded and believe that great talent deserves great compensation

• Full benefits (medical, vision, and dental) and flexible vacation policy (PTO)

• Small remote-first team across many countries — you'll be an early team member helping shape our vision, culture, and design practices

• A+ colleagues — our team includes alumni from Goldman Sachs, Blackrock, Two Sigma, Bridgewater, McKinsey, SpaceX, AWS, Google, Meta, Pinterest, Uniswap, Phantom

• Best-in-class investors — we are proud to be backed by leading crypto experts and VCs, including Pantera Capital, Founders Fund and Coinbase Ventures