Senior Distributed Systems Engineer

Stack

Responsibilities

• ▹Lead development of the data query and compute layer, scaling it to process the data needed to train AI models
• ▹Design protocol mechanisms for data privacy, permissioning and provenance using recent cryptography techniques (ZK proofs, MCP, TEEs)
• ▹Contribute to Vana, an EVM-compatible L1 blockchain designed for user-owned data transactions
• ▹Write documentation and contribute to whitepapers, including with outside researchers and engineers
• ▹Develop debugging and troubleshooting processes for quick resolution of node-related production issues
• ▹Take part in code reviews and give technical guidance to team members

Requirements

• ▹Experience building large-scale, secure, multi-node distributed systems
• ▹Experience designing pipelines for processing large amounts of data, ideally with distributed data storage
• ▹Experience in Python, Go or similar languages in mission-critical systems
• ▹Experience profiling, debugging and optimizing distributed systems for scale and performance
• ▹Some infrastructure experience with a top cloud platform (GCP, AWS, Azure)
• ▹Experience in a fast-paced, async-first, globally distributed startup environment

Nice to have

• ▹Experience in the compute-over-data space (sandboxed execution, data locality)
• ▹Experience with ML workflows (cleaning data, training and fine-tuning models)
• ▹Experience with privacy-preserving computation (TEEs, MPC, ZKP)
• ▹Experience or interest in decentralization technologies and web3 (protocol design, smart contracts)
• ▹Track record of significant open-source contributions

Soft skills

What we offer

• ▹Competitive salary with equity options
• ▹Comprehensive benefits package including health, dental and vision insurance
• ▹Flexible work schedule
• ▹Unlimited PTO
• ▹Remote work with in-person onboarding and retreats a few times a year

About the company

Vana is the leading decentralized AI network powered by user-owned data. It started out of MIT and has raised $20M from leading VCs.