About the Role

Interested in working on cutting-edge blockchain technology and creating equitable access to the global financial system? Since 2014, the mission-driven team at the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has helped fuel the tremendous growth of the Stellar blockchain network, an open-source platform that operates at high-scale today.

As a C++ Engineer at Stellar, you'll be at the heart of it all—designing and evolving Stellar Core, the distributed engine powering the global ledger and consensus. This is your chance to work on real-world, high-impact distributed systems that are actively used by developers, institutions, and builders around the world.

You'll tackle complex, meaningful challenges that push the boundaries of what's possible in blockchain—boosting performance, strengthening decentralization, and designing incentive mechanisms that drive long-term network health. Whether you're optimizing peer-to-peer networking, building resilience against coordinated attacks, or simulating consensus models to validate security and scalability—you'll be doing it all.

Responsibilities

• Design and build key components of Stellar Core—the backbone software behind the Stellar Network.
• Design and develop robust, scalable, and extensible technologies that empower developers and network participants.
• Collaborate on new architectures and subsystems, working alongside the CTO, the team of engineers, and the community of open source developers.
• Write clean, maintainable code with an emphasis on edge case analysis and future-proofing the work.
• Own core subsystems of Stellar Core, and help the team hit critical product milestones.
• Collaborate with the team on code review and design, and contribute to best practices for all of engineering at SDF.
• Investigate and refactor performance bottlenecks in order to continue scaling the system.
• Author detailed technical feature and protocol (RFC) specifications—design is taken seriously, and everyone is encouraged to be part of the RFC process.

Requirements

• 4+ years of experience developing software on a team
• BS or MS in Computer Science or equivalent field
• Excel in writing code in modern C++ or Rust in a production environment
• Great communicator who can advocate and lead technical discussions, especially during the design and code review process
• Solid understanding of software design patterns, and how to build components that are reusable, extensible, and modular
• Knowledgeable of best practices and development tools; passionate about technological innovation
• Passion for performance debugging and benchmarking
• Love a good challenge in an ever-evolving space—many of the challenges faced are being faced for the first time
• Enthusiastic about working on a small, growing team where you'll be given a lot of autonomy
• Open, empathetic, and care about putting the best ideas forward in a collaborative and helpful manner

Bonus Points

• Direct experience with designing and implementing distributed systems
• Strong curiosity in blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies, and understanding of the fundamentals of these systems

Compensation

Base salary range of $180,000–$290,000 depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, lumen-denominated grants are offered.

USA Benefits

• Competitive health, dental & vision coverage with most plans covered at 100% for the employee and any dependents
• Flexible time off + 15 company holidays including a company-wide holiday break
• Generous paid parental leave for all parents, plus paid pregnancy disability leave for birthing parents
• Gym reimbursement ($80 per month)
• Life & ADD (up to $50K)
• Short & Long term disability
• 401K with 4% match
• Health & Dependent Care FSA Accounts
• Commuter benefits with $250/month employer contribution
• Health Savings Account (HSA) with monthly employer contribution
• Family building benefits through Kindbody
• Wellbeing benefits (One Medical, Rightway, Headspace)
• L&D budget of $1,500/year
• Daily lunch and snacks in office
• Company retreats

Location

New York, Hybrid