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About Raiku

Raiku is reengineering blockchain infrastructure from first principles to make global digital markets as precise and dependable as physical systems. Built on Solana, our platform delivers deterministic execution, guaranteed inclusion, and low-latency performance—solving the foundational failures that cause transactions to miss, trades to revert, and systems to collapse under pressure. By placing high-performance compute close to where transactions happen and coordinating execution through our advanced scheduling engine, Raiku empowers developers to build scalable, high-performance applications—and gives institutions the reliability and control they demand. We believe financial infrastructure should behave like physics: fast, reliable, and predictable—every time, without exception.

Research Engineer (Solana/Rust)

We’re seeking a passionate Research Engineer to drive protocol-level innovation on Solana. As the ideal candidate, you’ll combine deep technical expertise with scientific curiosity to:

• Lead technical discovery initiatives focused on Solana’s runtime, consensus, scheduler, and networking layers
• Conduct performance modeling and develop validator-centric architecture solutions
• Identify and address complex edge cases in transaction handling across production environments
• Translate research findings into actionable protocol design improvements

You’ll collaborate directly with our CEO, CTO (your manager), protocol architects, and key Solana ecosystem contributors to shape validator economics and transaction lifecycle guarantees across the Raiku stack.

Key Responsibilities

• Analyze and model Solana’s core architecture — deeply understand and document Solana’s runtime, scheduler, consensus, Turbine/Gossip, and transaction pipeline, with emphasis on edge cases under network stress or validator misbehavior.
• Lead internal research on validator economics and incentive alignment — explore impacts of Raiku’s slot marketplace, Ahead-of-Time (AOT) block auctions, and inclusion guarantees on validator profitability and slashing risks (e.g. under SIMDs 0096, 0123, 0212, 0228).
• Design bandwidth and blockspace pricing models — define and simulate pricing mechanisms for Raiku’s primary and secondary slot markets, ensuring validator rewards and application inclusion needs are economically aligned.
• Prototype system-level experiments across the Raiku and Solana stack — evaluate performance, liveness, and correctness when integrating Raiku’s ackermann-node and sidecar into Solana validator clients (e.g. Agave, Jito).
• Develop proofs-of-concept for transaction lifecycle primitives — such as pre-confirmations, slot reservations, and proof streaming for large bundled state transitions.
• Research and benchmark global account models — test interaction models across multiple VMs (e.g. SVM, EVM, MOVE) and assess state determinism and composability in high-throughput environments.
• Contribute to the design of Raiku’s protocol-level mechanisms — including builder commitments, proposer formats, MEV mitigation strategies, and slot slashing logic under failure modes.
• Author technical deep dives, simulations, and RFCs — serve as a knowledge base for both internal and external stakeholders across Raiku’s validator, capital, and app layers along with wider engineering and marketing teams.
• Collaborate with external researchers and validators — especially those running testnet sidecars or participating in bandwidth resale to ensure safe and performant mainnet integration.

Preferred Qualifications

• Technical background with strong system-level experience
• Proven open-source engineering background, evidenced by contributions to major blockchain or distributed systems repositories — ideally within the Solana ecosystem.
• Involvement in protocol research, MEV, performance tuning, or client implementations
• Experience designing proofs-of-concept for novel execution or slot-inclusion logic
• Familiarity with zero-knowledge proof systems and state settlement patterns
• Active presence in relevant research circles, Discords, or open-source forums

What We’re Looking For

• 3+ years of experience working with Rust in production (preferably in core systems or blockchain contexts)
• Deep familiarity with Solana’s source code and protocol-level architecture (runtime, scheduler, consensus, networking)
• Demonstrated ability to reason through complex distributed systems
• Experience modeling and explaining performance bottlenecks in real-world validators
• Ability to read protocol proposals and specs and convert them into actionables (e.g. implementation paths, test harnesses, edge case coverage)
• A deep design philosophy focused on deterministic execution and reliable system behavior
• Strong communication skills and clarity in technical writing

What We Offer

• A chance to join a category-defining protocol team pushing the frontier of Solana infrastructure
• Token upside and a key role in shaping Raiku’s ecosystem footprint
• Remote-first team with async workflows, a high ownership culture, and deep technical curiosity
• Competitive salary, token allocation, and performance-based bonuses
• Budget for travel, ecosystem events, and home office setup

Apply Now:

Blockchain.com is the world's leading software platform for digital assets. Offering the largest production blockchain platform in the world, we share the passion to code, create, and ultimately build an open, accessible and fair financial future, one piece of software at a time. We are looking for a skilled, hands-on DeFi Software Engineer to sit on our Institutional Trading team. You will play a critical role in building financial and crypto-native trading strategies. As a Defi Software Engineer you will implement automated trading strategies on various blockchains, work with traders / quants to generate revenue, and be part of one of the most competitive trading desks WHAT YOU WILL DO

Develop code (in Rust / Solidity / Python) to automate DeFi trading strategies Work closely with traders / quants on our Institutional Trading team  Implement best practice code to automate strategies that run on DApps (Decentralized Apps) and take advantage of blockchain-specific implementation (MEV for example, but not limited to this)

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

Excellent technical skills in Rust or Solidity,  Excellent understanding of blockchains / decentralized apps, The desire to be part of a small, successful team and scale it even further, A strong sense of ownership and responsibility in a fast-paced environment, You know how blockchains / decentralized apps work, preferably, you worked closely with them on the technical level before, You take full responsibility for all the projects you work in.

COMPENSATION & PERKS:

Full-time salary based on experience and meaningful equity in an industry-leading company Hybrid model working from home & our office in London Unlimited vacation policy; work hard and take time when you need it Work from Anywhere Policy: You can work remotely from anywhere in the world for up to 20 days per year. Apple equipment The opportunity to be a key player and build your career at a rapidly expanding, global technology company in an emerging field Flexible work culture  

Blockchain is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law. This policy applies to all employment practices within our organization, including hiring, recruiting, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, leave of absence, and apprenticeship. Blockchain makes hiring decisions based solely on qualifications, merit, and business need at the time. You may contact our Data Protection Officer by email at email. Your personal data will be processed for the purposes of managing Controller’s recruitment related activities, which include setting up and conducting interviews and tests for applicants, evaluating and assessing the results thereto, and as is otherwise needed in the recruitment and hiring processes. Such processing is legally permissible under Art. 6(1)(f) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation) as necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the Controller, which are the solicitation, evaluation, and selection of applicants for employment. Your personal data will be shared with Greenhouse Software, Inc., a cloud services provider located in the United States of America and engaged by Controller to help manage its recruitment and hiring process on Controller’s behalf.  Accordingly, if you are located outside of the United States, your personal data will be transferred to the United States once you submit it through this site. Because the European Union Commission has determined that United States data privacy laws do not ensure an adequate level of protection for personal data collected from EU data subjects, the transfer will be subject to appropriate additional safeguards under the standard contractual clauses.  

Apply Now:

About GFX Labs

At Oku, we aim to close the gap between the CeFi and DeFi trading experiences. It is no mistake that 95% of crypto trading occurs on centralized platforms like Binance and Coinbase since their organizations have spent substantially more time and resources investing in their trading interface, while DeFi has primarily been focused on infrastructure and protocols for the last several years.

However, that is going to change soon. While CeFi organizations enjoy their Web2 stack, a Web3 company like Oku can leverage the composability of the DeFi ecosystem and blockchain technology to offer a high-quality trading experience that will eventually be indistinguishable from CeFi and, in the long run, overcome their legacy systems. That is why Oku has 50+ partners in or supporting the app.

Oku initially started as a project within GFX Labs after they received a $1.6M grant from the Uniswap Foundation in October 2022 to build and launch a reimagined trading interface, analytics platform, and API for Uniswap v3. After ten months of development, Oku launched in July 2023, and since then, Oku has supported the DAO Uniswap’s efforts to expand across new blockchains.

Today, our primary feature is our smart order routing system, which integrates 12+ order routing systems to ensure all users find the best price possible. We have also adapted our order routing technology to offer a bridge aggregator with 11+ integrated bridges. Most recently, to close the CeFi/DeFi gap further, we added on/off-ramping with USD and EURO to our interface at an industry-low fee of free! Our other popular features include trustless onchain limit orders built directly on Uniswap v3, our position manager page for users who want to manage their LP positions, and our Uniswap v3 analytics.

Over the coming years, Oku will be expanding the scope of our offering and improving the quality of our user experience.

Why work at Oku?

Any firm can pay a high salary and offer good incentives (as will we), but most can’t offer interesting, challenging, and rewarding work.

We have something to prove. Our team is young and hungry. We like to move fast and make things. We know when to double down and when to cut our losses. We are going to make mistakes, and we are going to build a better product because of them. We don’t micromanage or have a huge team of product managers. We want self starters who take charge and solve problems.

We don’t care if you went to school, what grades you got, or your age. Show us what you have built, what problems you have solved, and what skills you have.

About the role

As a Software Engineer at Oku Trade, you’ll work alongside our engineering team to maintain and improve both our backend services and frontend applications. This role offers the opportunity to work on meaningful projects with real impact while growing your skills across our technology stack.

You’ll contribute to core components of our platform, including APIs, data processing routines, blockchain indexing, on-chain interactions across EVM chains, and React-based user interfaces. Working closely with senior engineers, you’ll have the space to implement improvements and tackle challenging problems that directly affect our users.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop and improve backend APIs in Golang and Node.js that handle high-throughput blockchain data and serve real-time market information
• Work with EVM blockchain data, including parsing transaction logs, decoding smart contract events, and maintaining indexing services that track on-chain activity
• Enhance our React frontend applications, focusing on performance optimization and user experience improvements for DeFi interfaces
• Implement features across both backend and frontend, ensuring seamless data flow from blockchain to user interface

You might be great for this role if you have:

• 2+ years of Golang development experience with strong backend engineering skills
• Hands-on experience with Web3 development, particularly working with EVM chains and understanding concepts of transaction indexing, MEV, and DeFi protocols
• Strong React skills with experience building responsive, data-heavy interfaces
• Enthusiasm for diving deep into complex systems and learning new technologies
• Desire to grow your skills by working on challenging problems across the stack

What you’ll do at Oku.Trade:

• Work on critical infrastructure that processes millions of blockchain transactions daily while implementing new features to expand our capabilities
• Contribute to improving our blockchain indexing architecture and API design as we scale to support more chains and protocols
• Collaborate with a small team where your work has a visible impact on the product
• Gain experience with production systems that thousands of users rely on daily

We’d love to hear from you if you’re excited about:

• Growing your engineering skills by working on real-world blockchain challenges
• Contributing to systems that make DeFi more accessible and understandable
• Working in a collaborative environment where you can learn from experienced engineers while making meaningful contributions
• Building your expertise at the intersection of traditional web development and blockchain technology

Tools we are using today:

• Golang, React, Node, Figma
• Postgresql, Temporal, NATS, Clickhouse
• Gitlab and Github
• DigitalOcean, fly.io, Kubernetes, KNative, Pulumi