Come join Irreducible as we accelerate the ZK revolution by supporting web3 networks with reliable and cost-efficient proof generation. We’re a high-performance cryptography startup (with an exciting hardware twist) looking for a talented Systems Software Engineer. A more technical description of what we do is below!

About the role:

As a systems software engineer at Irreducible, you will design and implement our low-level system software stack that integrates our FPGA accelerators into cryptographic application code. This involves working on our custom device driver, fine-grained management of memory and compute resources, detailed performance profiling, and modification and instrumentation of cryptography code. Team members work closely with the FPGA and cryptography engineers to codesign the hardware-software interfaces, and with the infrastructure engineers to develop and deploy software to Irreducible’s bare metal server cluster.

Being a self-starter is essential, as there are always a variety of challenges that need to be tackled. Your work will have a direct impact on our growth and success.

Locations supported:

We’re looking for candidates who are located between the USA East Coast and Central Europe time zones.

We are also in the process of opening an office in Berlin, and are excited to support relocation, on a case by case basis. Once our office is open, we plan to bring the whole company together for ~one week per quarter in Berlin.

We have a globally distributed company, and ensuring the team works in a cohesive way is our main goal.

Necessary Qualifications:

• Advanced knowledge of Rust
• A deep passion for technology, software development, and secure computing
• Demonstrated ability to deliver software projects from inception to completion in a fast-pace environment
• Understanding of computer architecture and data structures
• Passion for performance tuning and optimization
• Experience writing multi-threaded, concurrent software
• Ability to think across layers of abstractions
• Experienced and well-versed in Linux, version control, scripting, and build systems
• Understanding of technology tradeoffs and a pragmatic approach to problem solving
• Strong written and verbal communications skills

Bonus Qualifications:

• Aptitude for math and computer algorithms
• Understanding of cryptographic proof systems and zero-knowledge cryptography
• implementing low-level cryptographic primitives

About us:

We're building out a high-performance, cost-efficient compute stack for advanced cryptographic proofs, specifically zk-SNARKs. Verifiable computing with zk-SNARKs is taking off as a solution to the scalability and privacy limitations that today's blockchains suffer from. A new wave of blockchain protocols that use zk-SNARKs to prove smart contract executions, such as Polygon zkEVM, Starknet, and zkSync, are already in production. We believe there is a big market opportunity to generate proofs for these networks at scale in a cost-effective way [1]. There are lots of interesting performance engineering challenges we need to solve to keep up with the maximum device throughput.

We take the approach of co-designing hardware and software systems to accelerate SNARK generation end-to-end. Our first-generation tech stack uses FPGA accelerators running custom digital logic tailor-made for our use case [2].

We also conduct cryptography research to identify computationally efficient algorithms for verifiable computing. These research efforts produced a novel cryptographic construction based on towers of binary fields called Binius [3] [4], which we are currently developing into a production-grade system.

Our team has cross-domain expertise and includes hardware designers, low-level systems software engineers, cryptography engineers, and data center specialists, several of whom worked in HFT previously.

[1] https://www.paradigm.xyz/2022/04/zk-hardware

[2] https://www.ulvetanna.io/news/fpga-architecture-for-goldilocks-ntt

[3] https://www.ulvetanna.io/news/binius-hardware-optimized-snark

[4] https://cointelegraph.com/news/vitalik-buterin-explains-binius-improve-zero-knowledge-proofs

[5] https://www.ulvetanna.io/news/introducing-ulvetanna

We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace where talented individuals can thrive and grow. We value the different perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds that each person brings to our team. Even if you don't fit 100% of the job's necessary qualifications, we'd still love to hear from you.

Know someone who could be a fit? Feel free to pass along a link to the role: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/irreducible/ee7001ba-f905-4b82-b737-613d3dc7bce3

Recruitment Agency Policy

To all recruitment agencies: Irreducible inc. does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias, Irreducible inc. employees, or any other organisation location. Irreducible inc. is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.

Irreducible inc. have an internal recruiting, or talent acquisition, department (“TA”). Irreducible inc. may supplement this internal capability from time to time with assistance from temporary staffing agencies, placement services, and professional recruiters ("Agency"). Agencies are hereby specifically directed NOT to contact Irreducible inc. employees directly in an attempt to present candidates. To protect the interests of all parties, Irreducible inc. will not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than directly from a candidate. Any unsolicited resumes sent to Irreducible inc., including unsolicited resumes sent to Irreducible inc. mailing address, fax machine, email address or any other means, directly to Irreducible inc.employees, or to Irreducible inc. resume database will be considered Irreducible inc. property and therefore will NOT be liable for any placement resulting from the receipt of an unsolicited resume.

Agency agreements will only be valid if in writing and signed by an officer of Irreducible inc. or that officer's designee. No other Irreducible inc. employee is authorized to bind Irreducible inc. to any agreement regarding the placement of candidates by Agencies. Irreducible inc. hereby specifically rejects, and denies any liability under, any agreement purporting to be accepted based on negative consent, negotiation with a candidate, performance, or any means other than the signature of an Irreducible inc. officer