Senior Backend Developer

📋 Description

• • Join RootstockLabs as a Senior Backend Developer and become a core contributor to one of the most ambitious projects in the Bitcoin and FinTech ecosystem. Rootstock (RSK) is the first open-source, decentralized smart-contract platform secured by Bitcoin’s mining network, enabling Ethereum-compatible applications to run natively on Bitcoin. In this role you will evolve the reference client that powers a global, permissionless financial infrastructure handling millions of dollars in daily volume.
• • Own the end-to-end delivery of critical protocol features that extend RSK’s compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) while preserving Bitcoin-grade security. You will design, implement, and optimize low-level components in Java—from peer-to-peer networking and transaction processing to cryptographic validation and consensus logic—ensuring the network remains resilient under adversarial conditions and high throughput.
• • Collaborate daily with a distributed, multicultural engineering squad spanning Argentina, Europe, and Asia. You will participate in architecture discussions, lead code reviews, and mentor junior engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and open-source best practices. Your pull requests will be reviewed by world-class cryptographers and blockchain researchers, giving you direct exposure to cutting-edge innovations.
• • Drive security and reliability initiatives that safeguard billions in total value locked. You will write exhaustive unit and integration tests, simulate attack vectors, and coordinate third-party audits. When incidents occur, you will lead post-mortems, implement hot-fixes, and roll out network upgrades with zero-downtime deployment strategies.
• • Improve developer experience by designing clean APIs, comprehensive documentation, and sample code that lower the barrier to building DeFi, NFT, and DAO applications on Bitcoin. You will gather feedback from hackathons, community calls, and GitHub issues, then translate it into actionable enhancements that accelerate ecosystem growth.
• • Engage with a vibrant global community of open-source contributors, node operators, wallet providers, and DeFi builders. You will triage GitHub issues, review external pull requests, and present technical roadmaps at conferences and meetups, positioning yourself as a thought leader in the Bitcoin and Ethereum communities.
• • Stay ahead of the curve by researching emerging Layer-2 scaling techniques, zero-knowledge proofs, and cross-chain interoperability protocols. You will prototype experimental features in feature branches, benchmark performance, and publish findings that influence the long-term direction of the Rootstock protocol.
• • Contribute to transparent governance by authoring Rootstock Improvement Proposals (RSKIPs) that outline protocol changes, rationale, and security considerations. Your proposals will be debated in public forums and, once accepted, implemented by you and the broader contributor base.