DeFi Protocol Engineer Job Description Template

The DeFi protocol engineer builds the financial primitives of a decentralised protocol: lending markets, automated market makers, liquidation engines, vaults and the incentives that hold them together. The role needs software engineering and financial reasoning in equal measure, since the most damaging failures in DeFi have usually been economic rather than a straightforward coding bug.

Typical Duties and Responsibilities

• Design and implement core protocol mechanisms such as lending, swaps or vaults
• Model economic behavior including incentives, liquidations and edge conditions
• Implement oracle integrations and reason carefully about manipulation risk
• Build simulations and stress tests of protocol behavior under extreme markets
• Optimize contract efficiency and user transaction costs
• Coordinate audits and lead remediation of findings
• Build monitoring for protocol health, liquidity and solvency
• Support governance proposals with technical analysis
• Integrate with other protocols and assess the composability risk of doing so
• Respond to incidents affecting protocol funds or availability

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, mathematics, engineering or a related field

Required Skills and Experience

• 3+ years building DeFi protocols or comparable on chain financial systems
• Strong smart contract engineering with production deployments
• Deep understanding of AMM design, lending mechanics and liquidation logic
• Ability to model economic attacks including oracle and flash loan exploits
• Experience with simulation and scenario testing of protocol behavior
• Understanding of composability risk across integrated protocols
• Rigorous testing and audit preparation practice
• Sound judgment about which risks are acceptable

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience running a protocol through a market stress event
• Background in traditional financial markets