Layer 1 Engineer Job Description Template

The layer 1 engineer builds and maintains the base chain, working on the parts that everything else depends on: block production, consensus, the virtual machine and the peer to peer network. Changes at this level affect every application and every node operator, and they cannot be rolled back easily, so the engineering culture around them is deliberately conservative.

Typical Duties and Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain base layer blockchain components
• Work on block production, validation and consensus participation
• Optimize state access, storage layout and database performance
• Implement virtual machine or execution environment changes
• Improve peer to peer networking, propagation and synchronisation
• Design and coordinate protocol upgrades across the validator set
• Build extensive testing including network simulation
• Profile node performance and address bottlenecks
• Support validators and infrastructure operators
• Document protocol behavior and upgrade procedures

Education

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in computer science or a related field

Required Skills and Experience

• 4+ years of systems programming including blockchain work
• Expert Rust, Go or C++
• Deep understanding of consensus, finality and fork choice
• Experience with high performance storage and state management
• Knowledge of peer to peer networking and gossip protocols
• Ability to reason about behavior across a heterogeneous node population
• Strong testing and simulation practice
• Experience through a live network upgrade

Preferred Qualifications

• Contributions to a major client implementation
• Experience with validator or staking infrastructure