Senior Cryptographer

About Aztec

At Aztec, our goal is to add privacy to Ethereum.

In the current public blockchain paradigm, users and entities unknowingly broadcast data in the public, compromising privacy and security to get trustlessness.

Not only are unencrypted blockchains inherently privacy-exposing, they require significant redundancy to compute and verify the legitimacy of transactions.

Implementing scalable encryption in a public blockchain paradigm requires cutting-edge math and engineering. Thankfully, our team of scientists and engineers invented Plonk, the industry-standard zkSNARK, and Noir, the universal language of zero knowledge.

Now, we’re building a first of its kind Layer 2 with private smart contracts. This requires new cryptographic primitives, a zero-knowledge DSL for writing contracts, a privacy-friendly execution environment, a carefully designed set of circuits that prove the validity of the chain to L1, a decentralized block-building and proving mechanism, and a top-tier user and developer experience. And it’s now time to bring it to market.

We’ve raised $125 million from industry-leading investors including a16z crypto, Paradigm, Variant, Consensys, and a_capital, and we’re growing quickly.

Team and Responsibilities

We’re creating a general-purpose private smart contract layer for Ethereum, affectionately dubbed ‘Aztec’.

We utilize bleeding-edge cryptography in our tech stack to realize private transactions on a public blockchain network, particularly in the realm of zero-knowledge cryptography.

As a result we possess a world-class R&D team that has co-authored the Plonk, Plookup and Zeromorph protocols. Plonk in particular is rapidly becoming an industry standard ZK-SNARK technology.

We are looking for experienced cryptographers to expand our R&D team and allow us to further enhance the state-of-the-art when it comes to generating proofs of private computation.

Role focus:

• Research techniques to improve both the constant and asymptotic performance of our cryptographic protocols
• Perform literature reviews to identify new developments that could improve the Prover/Verifier efficiency of our cryptographic protocols (or replace them entirely)
• Develop security proofs for our ZK-SNARK circuit architectures
• Liaise with our applied cryptographers to assist them with implementing our cryptographic protocols in software

Required Experience:

• PhD-level qualification in cryptography or a related field
• Named author in one or more papers in the field of zero-knowledge cryptography
• Familiarity with algorithms, data structures and basic programming concepts
• Ability to read and understand software implementations of cryptographic protocols written in C++
• A penchant for clear and comprehensive documentation
• Able to provide clear and constructive feedback for more junior cryptographers / applied cryptographers, mentoring where necessary
• A passion for blockchain, its potential, and what we’re trying to achieve.

What we offer:

• Flexible and remote work environment
• 25 days holiday + bank holidays annually
• Additional benefits include health insurance, retirement plans, and opportunities for professional development.
• Quarterly offsite travel for collaboration 
• Events and conference budget
• An opportunity to work at the cutting edge of blockchain and FinTech with a world class cryptography and engineering team

Aztec Labs is an equal opportunity employer and we value creativity, diversity, and intellectual curiosity. If you're passionate about leveraging your creative talents to make a real-world impact, and if you want to be part of a team that's shaping the future of digital privacy, then we would love to hear from you.