Staff Protocol Engineer

Polygon Labs is a global blockchain payments company building and operating infrastructure to move money instantly, reliably, and at internet scale, with the mission to move all money onchain. It is building the Polygon Open Money Stack, an open and integrated stack of services and technologies to instantly and reliably move money anywhere, and put it to work. Its infrastructure has facilitated trillions of dollars in onchain value transfer and supported millions of transactions daily for some of the globe's largest banks, fintechs, enterprises, and consumer applications.

As a Staff Engineer within the Polygon PoS engineering team, you’ll play a mission-critical role in evolving one of the most used networks in the Web3 ecosystem. Reporting to the SVP of Engineering, you will lead efforts to solve deep protocol-level challenges including scalability, state growth, and latency - setting the architectural direction for the future of Polygon PoS. This is a unique opportunity to work on Ethereum-aligned infrastructure that supports massive scale, collaborating with some of the most experienced protocol engineers in the space.

You’ll be joining a lean, high-caliber team of 7 engineers and will be expected to lead by example - driving excellence in design, implementation, and collaboration. This role is ideal for someone with deep expertise in protocol design, and Golang development who is excited about building performant, resilient systems in a rapidly evolving space.

• Lead design and prototyping of long-term solutions to address scalability, latency, and state growth challenges on the Polygon PoS network.

• Drive architectural decisions across the PoS codebase, contributing to Geth, Cosmos SDK, or CometBFT-based systems as needed.

• Identify and resolve deep technical issues in protocol behavior, consensus, and state sync.

• Champion code quality, documentation, testing, and developer best practices across the team.

• Mentor and support engineers across the stack to elevate the overall engineering bar.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with protocol researchers, DevOps, security, and ecosystem teams to ship robust upgrades to the live network.

• 7+ years of backend or protocol engineering experience, with 2+ years in senior or staff-level roles.

• Deep experience working in Golang, ideally within distributed systems, consensus, or blockchain infrastructure.

• Experience contributing to or working with Ethereum clients (e.g., Geth) or Cosmos-based stacks (e.g., Cosmos SDK, CometBFT).

• Demonstrated ability to lead architecture, code quality, and complex system design in fast-paced engineering teams.

• Comfortable working asynchronously with distributed teams in EMEA, US East Coast, or adjacent time zones.

• Previous contributions to public blockchain protocols or open-source infrastructure.

• Familiarity with performance optimization tools and techniques in large-scale systems.

• Ability to communicate complex technical topics clearly across varied stakeholders.

• Passion for decentralized systems and aligning infrastructure to Ethereum’s values.
  

The goal of the Polygon Labs total rewards program is to support the health and well-being of you and your family. Our comprehensive compensation plan includes the following benefits for our full time employees:

• Remote first global workforce

• Industry leading Medical, Dental and Vision health insurance*

• Company matching 401k with 3% match*

• $1,500 Home Office Set Up Allowance (life-time max)

• $75 Monthly internet or phone reimbursement

• Flexible Time Off

• Company issued laptop

• Egg freezing, mental health, and employee wellness benefits

*In certain countries medical, dental and vision is fully covered for employees & their dependents. This is country and plan specific.

*401k is for United States employees only

Polygon Labs is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace and is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. Polygon Labs is committed to treating all people in a way that allows them to maintain their dignity and independence. We believe in integration and equal opportunity. Accommodations are available throughout the recruitment process and applicants with a disability may request to be accommodated throughout the recruitment process. We will work with all applicants to accommodate their individual accessibility needs.

If you think you have what it takes, but don't necessarily meet every single point on the job description, please still get in touch. We'd love to have a chat and see if you could be a great fit.

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