Soma Capital Portfolio Jobs

Founding Engineer

Alongside Finance

Alongside Finance

Other Engineering
United States · Remote
Posted on Aug 17, 2023

Who We Are

Alongside is building the future of index products: on-chain, low-fee, index protocols that benefit from interoperability with DeFi that traditional index products do not.


Why Us

At Alongside we pride ourselves on our willingness to question our assumptions, receive/act on feedback, think rigorously about problems and their solutions, and act with conviction under uncertainty.

Role and Responsibilities

Technical:

  • Continual Learning of Tooling and Best Practices – Since smart contract engineering is a relatively new programming paradigm, the tooling and best practices are quickly evolving as the industry discovers better patterns, experiences hacks in common contracts, etc. You have your methods to keep up to date with these developments and integrate them into your work.
  • Cross-domain Comfort – You must be comfortable reasoning about the interplay between mission-critical smart contracts, critical backend systems, and financial incentives. You can synthesize the behaviors of these different types of systems into the system's behavior as a whole.
  • Security Mindset – You measure your ability by how good you are at finding flaws in systems. When implementing systems you rely on a process to reduce sources of errors.
  • Financial Intuition – You have an intuition for the basics of markets. You understand the desires and requirements of arbitrageurs, liquidity providers, MEV extractors, etc.

Non-technical:

  • Comfort Giving and Receiving Feedback – Assuming a trusted and caring environment, you run towards the opportunity to give and solicit feedback.
  • Empathetic Communication – You seek to understand the state of knowledge of your communication partner(s) and tailor your communication to have the best chance of being understood.
  • Detailed Communication – When important (for instance, in disagreements), you can break your model of the world down into smaller chunks to make progress.
  • Wide-Ranging Intellectual Curiosity – You enjoy learning and sharing with your colleagues on all sorts of topics :)

The ideal candidate will have

  • Over 2 years of pertinent industry exposure, including a minimum of 2 years spent on developing smart contracts using Solidity for Ethereum or any other chain that employs the EVM.
  • Proven track record of deploying intricate protocols to production and their security assessments.
  • An in-depth grasp of blockchain basics, prevalent vulnerabilities, and intricacies of the EVM.
  • Familiarity with essential tools tailored for smart contract developers like Hardhat and Foundry.
  • A drive for teamwork with fellow developers and non-technical members of the team
  • Proficiency in testing and hands-on experience with test frameworks geared towards smart contracts.
  • A value for open communication and a-synchronous work

Bonus points if you have:

  • Experience managing/building a major protocol.
  • Proficiency in Web3 security encompasses areas such as smart contract reviews, rigorous verification, overseeing validator nodes, safeguarding wallets, and managing cryptographic keys.
  • A solid grounding in cryptography.
  • A knack for engaging with the developer community and synergizing with in-house engineering groups. Prior contributions to open-source projects in the blockchain space will be greatly valued.
    • Unlimited Time Off
    • 100% company-paid medical/dental
    • 401k retirement savings plan for US employees
    • Quarterly offsites
    • Remote office setup
    • 12 weeks of paid parental leave
    • Asynchronous work environment