Head of Protocol Engineering
You will lead the architecture, execution, and operating standards for Compound’s smart-contract and protocol stack. Set technical direction, review critical code, lead protocol releases, build the engineering team, manage security and audit processes, and guide high-stakes technical and product decisions.
Responsibilities
- Own protocol architecture and engineering execution
- Represent Protocol Engineering in governance forums, community calls, technical AMAs, events, and partner discussions
- Lead the design of lending and borrowing infrastructure
- Define on-chain and off-chain system boundaries
- Establish standards for development, testing, review, audits, verification, deployment, monitoring, and incident response
- Build and develop the protocol engineering team
- Review critical architecture, code, security decisions, and releases
- Evaluate protocol tradeoffs and failure scenarios with product and risk leadership
- Guide protocol changes through design, implementation, audit, validation, governance, deployment, and monitoring
- Coordinate with auditors, security firms, infrastructure partners, and ecosystem contributors
- Lead protocol incident readiness and remediation
- Establish guardrails for AI-assisted development tools
Requirements
- 8+ years of software engineering experience
- 4+ years of crypto, DeFi, smart-contract engineering, protocol security, or related experience
- Distributed systems
- Financial infrastructure or blockchain protocols
- Production systems handling financial value
- Solidity
- EVM architecture
- Smart-contract security
- Upgradeability
- Protocol design
- Production deployment
- DeFi primitives
- Lending markets
- Collateralization
- Liquidations
- Oracle design
- Liquidity management
- Governance systems
- Engineering leadership
- Hiring and coaching
- Performance management
- Security audits
- Incident response
- Technical communication