Who We Are

The Solana Foundation is a non-profit based in Zug, Switzerland, dedicated to the adoption, decentralization, and security of the Solana network. Solana is a high performance blockchain that can deliver a fast and friendly user experience, without sacrificing security. The Solana Foundation is working to realize a world where individuals own their data, use permissionless networks, and transfer information and value freely around the world. We are looking for talented people who are willing to jump right in and use their expertise to help the ecosystem build.

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The Opportunity

As the Solana ecosystem matures, multiple Solana validator implementations are being developed by completely different organizations and in separate code repositories. For the Solana network to function properly, the protocol’s state transitions must be exactly agreed upon across all implementations. In this role, you will act as a coordinator across multiple external teams and numerous individual contributors to ensure that a process for the network to adopt new changes to the protocol or closely associated tooling is robust and efficient. This will encompass: initial proposal discovery and socialization, ensuring the right SMEs and stakeholders provide adequate feedback and debate; social consensus amongst the development teams which would be required to adopt (or be impacted by) a new protocol change; providing well-documented processes and resources for the community at large to discover and understand the status and rationale for pending protocol changes; coordinating among network and infrastructure operators to ensure successful rollout and adoption of the updated protocol. You will support and be supported by your teammates at Solana Foundation including ecosystem engineering, developer relations, network infrastructure and marketing to expedite the community-driven advances to the Solana protocol and network.

Stakeholders include leaders of contributing organizations and anyone with good ideas in the ecosystem, all of whom have their own skill sets and opinions. This role will greatly impact the accessibility, stability and pace of open-source Solana protocol development by helping contributors understand the proposals, facilitate input, and highlight ramifications of changes in dependencies. Great candidates will be hugely impactful by proactively identifying gaps and finding resolutions.

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To be successful in this role

You will:

• Understand the protocol improvement proposals and help facilitate the discussions around implementation and prioritization
• Cross cut multiple projects across multiple organizations to understand up and downstream dependencies, accurately communicating updates and their ramifications
• Review delivery practices of contributing entities
• Communicate through to the ecosystem and validators back down to the contributing organizations
• Create documentation and materials to address knowledge gaps and accelerate projects’ understanding and collaboration around the Solana ecosystem

You ideally have: 

• Familiarity with Solana’s architecture and design principles, as well as its potential use cases and applications
• Bachelor of Science degree in a technical field such as Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or other relevant field and 2+ years of experience as a TPM
• Advanced knowledge of full life-cyle software development
• Experience with a wide array of technical expertises and software development processes
• Some programming and low level language understanding
• Executed on timelines, diverse task priorities and aligning teams with different perspectives to cohesive goals
• Knowledge and passion for blockchain protocol development
• Experience contributing to, and engaging with, open source software communities
• Enjoyment in technical advocacy, facilitating new ideas and desire to contribute to a future where people build together
• Strong communications skills both written and verbal

Bonus points:

• Contributions in the Solana/Bitcoin/Ethereum/Blockchain related open sources projects is a major plus
• Technical familiarity with cryptographic protocols and/or distributed systems

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