The Opportunity

As a Backend Engineer of our LLM Application on the Nascent engineering team, you will play a key role in building, scaling, and maintaining the system that powers our LLM infrastructure. From developing backend architecture in Rust to contributing to UI components in React, you’ll be working across the stack to support high-performance, scalable applications. You’ll collaborate closely with technical leadership and contribute meaningfully to the development of systems from the ground up, helping build scalable, performant, production-level applications with regular release cycles.

You will thrive in this role if you’re a self-directed learner who is excited to take ownership, move quickly, and adapt as requirements evolve. You’ve got experience with performance-sensitive systems, are comfortable with modern frontend frameworks, and bring a scrappy, startup-friendly mindset to solving complex problems. If you’re eager to level up in Rust, build at the intersection of AI and crypto, and build with a team that values curiosity, experimentation, and execution—this is the perfect role for you.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain the next phase of a world-class LLM system that is ensuring optimal performance, low-latency, reliability, and scalability.
• Support development and implementation of a backend, microservices, Rust architecture.
• Responsible for front-end development in support of backend configuration management.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with other engineering teams to support system users.
• Build and integrate custom AI agents and LLM-based tools into your daily workflows to enhance efficiency and productivity.
• Stay updated with emerging technologies, communication protocols, web standards, and best practices for data acquisition.
• Ensure resilience and stability through quality code reviews, unit, regression and user acceptance testing
• Be an integral contributor to a lean agile development team

About you

• You thrive in less structured environments and are at your best when driving and delivering results with the freedom to build and execute your own plan.
• You are as excited by starting a project as completing, maintaining, and continually optimizing it.
• You are resourceful and can toe the line between moving fast and breaking things and moving methodically to get things right the first time.
• You are extremely agile and have a strong ability to adapt quickly to evolving requirements.

Preferred experience

• 2-5 years of full-time software engineering experience, ideally as a systems programmer (Rust, C++, GO). Bonus if you have experience with and/or interest in learning Rust.
• Experience supporting a large project from start to finish.
• Experience with some front-end technologies (React, Angular, Vue.js)
• Experience beyond testing (e.g. quality processes, verification & validation)
• Experience building scalable, performant, production-level applications with regular release cycles
  • Performance sensitive engineering including multi-threading, streaming data, and concurrency
  • Distributed systems, microservices, relational databases
• Familiarity with Cloud platforms and IaC (Terraform and AWS)
• Experience building trading systems is a strong plus, with an interest in and enthusiasm for the crypto space.

About Nascent…

Founded in 2020, Nascent exists to build, expand, and capture opportunity, in open markets and permissionless technologies. Building from a base of permanent capital, we deploy assets across a range of both liquid and long-term strategies that ensure we are among the most active users of the open financial system we are helping to build. We’ve made venture investments in 100+ early-stage teams that we believe have the potential to create substantive change, expand boundaries, and find new horizons. We are consistently on the hunt for the most competitive and curious minds exploring the edges of the crypto ecosystem and leverage our hyper flexible structure to accelerate ideas into fully deployed strategies.

Our Team & Culture

At Nascent, we are an interdisciplinary team of investors, builders & creators, capable of achieving more together than we can as individuals. We offer the opportunity to contribute to building the future global economic system with a world-class team and culture that pairs the freedom to explore, experiment & play with a competitive drive to win. We invest in our people by providing the autonomy to build, coupled with accountability & honest feedback to help learn, grow, perform & win. Our distributed team understands the value of in-person time—we host two team retreats per year and encourage team members to come together for more frequent in-person work.

Principles that drive our team & work

• Compete to win
• Explore, experiment, play
• Always be building
• Seek and speak truth
• Own your shit.

What We Offer

At Nascent, we offer a competitive total compensation package heavily weighted toward bonus, ensuring that when we perform at our best and the firm wins we all win.

• The opportunity to learn, experiment and build in an entrepreneurial environment
• Remote and distributed working environment
• Comprehensive health benefits package including dental, vision, and life
• 16 weeks fully paid parental leave & supported return to work
• Home office setup and stipend or coworking space and wellness stipend
• Retirement plan matching contributions
• Open vacation policy as well as flexible work hours and location
• Team activities and bi-annual in-person team retreats

We are an equal opportunity employer and celebrate diversity and differences of perspectives. We do not discriminate on the basis of any status, inclusive of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

What are we all about?

We are a team of builders and researchers on a mission to empower enterprises and developers worldwide to access and build on decentralized systems.

Our expertise covers several domains: Ethereum and Starknet protocol engineering, layer-2, AI, cryptography research, protocol research, decentralized finance (DeFi), security auditing, formal verification, real-time monitoring, smart contract development, and dapps and enterprise engineering.

Working to solve some of the most challenging problems in the blockchain space, we frequently collaborate with renowned companies, such as Ethereum Foundation, Starknet Foundation, Gnosis Chain, Flashbots, Forta Protocol, Lido, EigenLayer, Open Zeppelin, RISCZero, Aleph Zero, and many more.

Today, we are a 350+ strong team working remotely across 66+ countries.

Are you the one?

The Role:

We are seeking an Infrastructure Engineer with strong expertise in identity management and system integrations. This role focuses on maintaining our authentication infrastructure, managing integrations, and providing technical support to ensure smooth operations across our engineering organisation.

Primary Responsibilities

• Implement and maintain Okta-based identity management solutions
• Configure and manage integrations between various cloud services and internal applications
• Handle access control and RBAC implementation across our technology stack
• Provide DevOps support and troubleshoot integration issues
• Maintain CI/CD infrastructure and deployment pipelines
• Create clear documentation for processes and integrations

Technical Requirements

Strong understanding of:

• SAML, OAuth, and SSO implementations
• RBAC and access management
• Okta administration and integration patterns
• Cloud IAM (AWS IAM, GCP IAM)

Experience with:

• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible)
• CI/CD tools (GitHub Actions)
• Cloud platforms (GCP and/or AWS)
• Basic scripting in Python or Go
• 2-5+ years of infrastructure/DevOps experience

Key Skills

• Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving abilities
• Experience in managing DevOps related requests efficiently
• Clear technical documentation skills
• Effective communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Ability to manage multiple integration projects

Nice to Have

• Blockchain technology exposure
• JFrog Artifactory experience
• Experience with multi-factor authentication implementation
• Knowledge of security best practices

Day-to-Day Activities

• Managing Okta configurations and integrations
• Handling access control and user provisioning
• Supporting teams with authentication and authorization needs
• Implementing and maintaining security standards
• Responding to and resolving DevOps support requests
• Automating routine tasks and workflows

Keep up to date on what we are working on by following us on our social channels:

• Discord
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

At Shakepay, we’re on a mission to usher in the Bitcoin golden age. We’re reimagining financial services to give every Canadian their fair shake. Our culture is built around doing work that matters, winning as a team, and celebrating success. If you're the kind of person who values growth, shipping fast, and sharing your ideas openly with a group of like-minded people, come and build with us! About Shakepay Since 2015, we’ve been building the Shakepay app to make buying and earning bitcoin fast, easy, and secure. In 2022, we launched the Shakepay Card, allowing shakers to earn bitcoin rewards when they shop. Today, more than one million Canadians use Shakepay to grow their bitcoin savings and take control of their financial future.  We’re regulated across all Canadian provinces and territories, and backed by renowned venture capitalists with a funding of $44M. We have a passionate, loyal, and growing community, and we’re looking for people who want to help us build something truly special.  About the Platform Team Our platform team empowers other engineering teams by providing the tools and practices they need to be autonomous. Our team’s mission and responsibilities are: 🚀 Developer Enablement – Build and own tools that remove friction from the development process, boosting engineering efficiency and making it easy to ship high-quality code. 🌐 Scalability & Architecture – Shape the future of our monolith by driving domain-driven design, layered architecture, and long-term system evolution. 🔧 Internal Tooling & Infrastructure – Own and optimise developer tools like Retool, ensuring our internal platforms are robust and scalable. 🤖 Quality, Automation & Observability – Improve observability, automate workflows, and embed operational excellence into everything we do. Shakepay is scaling, and so is our engineering complexity. We are re-architecting our monolithic codebase, defining domain boundaries, and laying the foundation for our next growth phase. As a Staff Platform Engineer, you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping developer experience, architecture, and automation across Shakepay’s engineering teams. You’ll have the autonomy to define technical strategy, lead high-impact initiatives, and mentor engineers—while staying hands-on in building the future of Shakepay’s platform. What you’ll be doing 

Architect and lead large-scale technical initiatives to optimise Shakepay’s monolith, introducing domain-driven design, modularity, and scalability. Design and implement foundational tools that streamline development workflows and enable engineers to confidently move fast. Lead automation efforts to reduce friction in CI/CD, deployments, and operational tasks, improving developer productivity and reliability. Mentor and coach engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and collaboration. Define and track engineering KPIs (DORA metrics, MTTR, developer satisfaction) to measure and drive continuous improvement. Participate in the on-call rotation and lead efforts to ensure sustainable incident response practices.

Who we’re looking for

8+ years of hands-on software development experience in a Developer Experience, Platform, or DevOps role. Proven ability to design and implement developer tooling, automation frameworks, and internal platforms that improve engineering velocity. Deep architectural knowledge of CI/CD, GitOps, infrastructure as code (IaC), and modern developer workflows—emphasising writing high-quality code. Strong software engineering fundamentals and ability to work across the stack (e.g., backend services, build systems, IDE integrations). Experience with incident management and on-call rotations, ensuring a culture of operational excellence and reliability. Passion for removing friction in the development process and writing code that enables other engineers to ship faster and more confidently.

Bonus points

Experience with technologies like Kubernetes, SQS, Datadog, AWS Cloud (Aurora, EKS, VPC, Lambdas), PostgreSQL, Terraform, ArgoCD, Helm, and Node.js. Background in building FinTech infrastructure or understanding the unique challenges in this space. Passion for improving internal developer documentation and knowledge sharing. Familiarity with Bitcoin and excitement to learn more. A curated folder of Safe-for-Work reaction memes to keep the team laughing.

Why join

Help shape the future of money: Be part of a team revolutionizing financial services in Canada, one sat at a time. Impact millions: As cryptocurrency continues gaining traction, our growth potential is massive. You can help us bring Shakepay and Bitcoin to all Canadians. Grow your career: We’re growing, and so can you! We have programs encouraging continuous learning, growth, and development. Ideas, not titles: We want the best ideas to be heard, no matter where they come from.

Perks and benefits

Competitive compensation and stock options: Get rewarded with competitive pay and join our employee stock option plan. Health benefits from day 1: Access to comprehensive health and dental coverage, including health and wellness spending accounts.  Remote-friendly: Work from anywhere in Canada, with optional access to our office spaces in Montreal and Toronto. Learning and development: A $2,000 annual budget for courses, certifications, and training to support your career growth. Time off: 20 days of vacation per year. And if you use all your vacation, we give you a $1,000 bonus. Parental leave: Enjoy a parental leave top up to 100% of your salary for 18 weeks. Home office setup: A MacBook, a $1,200 budget for home office improvements, and a monthly stipend for home and internet expenses. Salary in bitcoin option: Choose to receive your salary in bitcoin – the soundest money to ever exist. Team and company offsites: Whether team-specific or company-wide, these events offer a great chance to connect and collaborate in person.

We understand that potential can be just as valuable as experience. If you're eager to learn, grow, and contribute to the mission but worry that you may not have the “right” experience, we still want you to apply. We encourage applications from everyone, regardless of background and life experience. We’re firm believers that a little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept. Fluency in English is required due to the percentage of English-speaking customers and the nature of our platform, which is available to all Canadians.

Apply Now: