Protocol Security Engineer

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.

 Role

We are looking for an applied cryptographer or a cybersecurity professional with love for applied cryptography, and with experience in auditing and breaking cryptographic protocols to join our security team. The goal of the team is to secure a large codebase including:

• proving system backend library [Barretenberg]
• Zero Knowledge Proofs DSL [Noir]
• our [node software]
• our [Private Execution Environment] and much more

You will need to find potential security issues, write novel tooling and apply existing mechanisms to detect bugs, assist internal software teams and external contractors with audits.

Experience

•  Security experience in a software eng context (≥ 3 years)
• Industry (or large-project academic) programming experience in a low-level language (e.g., Rust or C++)
• Familiarity with applied cryptography and discrete mathematics (fields, elliptic curves)
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills on technical topics
• Participation in CTFs in a cryptography role a plus
• Compiler development experience a huge plus
• Web Security experience a huge plus

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.