Cryptography Engineer Job Description Template

The cryptography engineer implements and integrates cryptographic primitives correctly, which is a narrower and less forgiving discipline than general engineering. The work covers signature schemes, hashing, commitment schemes, threshold protocols and increasingly zero knowledge systems. The defining characteristic of the role is that failures are silent, so review and testing practice carries far more weight than usual.

Typical Duties and Responsibilities

• Implement and integrate cryptographic primitives and protocols
• Review designs for correct use of cryptography
• Implement threshold signature and multiparty computation schemes where required
• Work on zero knowledge proof systems and circuits
• Optimize cryptographic operations for performance
• Write test vectors and validate against reference implementations
• Assess and select libraries rather than writing primitives unnecessarily
• Support key management and secure random number generation design
• Document security assumptions and threat models
• Support audits and formal review of cryptographic components

Education

• Master’s or PhD in cryptography, mathematics or computer science, or equivalent demonstrated expertise

Required Skills and Experience

• 3+ years implementing cryptographic systems in production
• Strong mathematical foundation in number theory and algebra
• Proficiency with Rust, C++ or Go
• Deep understanding of signature schemes, hash functions and commitments
• Awareness of side channel and implementation attacks
• Discipline to use vetted libraries rather than novel constructions
• Rigorous testing against known vectors
• Clear documentation of security assumptions

Preferred Qualifications

• Zero knowledge proof system experience
• Publications or contributions to cryptographic libraries